Chapter 16
Aethiopia
The heavens open and retribution rains. Poseidon amplifies – he is a colossus.
The fact that he wants me, that he does not agree with Ceto’s judgement, is irrelevant.
He is no oath breaker, and her falsehood would not occur to him.
Now is his chance at divine punishment and he will not waste it.
The Erythraean Sea darkens to black, an oily basin foaming and bubbling.
It rises up, thick and viscous. I have never known the sea to be so claiming, but claim it does.
And my mother is taken.
She is dragged away from her women, along with her throne.
It happens before she can suck a scream and so I scream for her.
I scream my denial, I plead, but still she scores the earth, pressed to her throne by some juddering force before being wrenched up, up, into the air.
Ceto is before me, grasping my arms, trying to pull me away, back to the tent; she does not want me to see what will come next.
I face her, spitting with rage. ‘What did you do? What did you do?’
‘What I had to.’ She says it with intensity, and she does not look sorry. I do not know why I am so shocked. She told me she would lie. She told me she would kill for me. She told me she did not care about my mother.
‘My mother! Your oath—’
‘I will bear my punishment.’ Her chin is set.
But she will not bear it alone. I know it as I hear the beat of wings about me but see no bird.
We are too entangled now and it is not justice Horkos deals in but vengeance.
Demons do not discriminate. I feel the dark brushing of feathers and my skin is buffeted by their winds.
They say the avenger of perjury is borne by his mother, Eris, winged and terrible and the purveyor of strife, who, in discovering that deception begets discord, comes to feed and be fed.
My mouth opens and the words I speak are not my own. I hate myself because in the cavity where once sat my heart, before I gave it to the Nereid burning black before me, lies a desire to voice this truth and spare my mother. Though I know the cost.
‘It is a lie, my Lord Poseidon.’ The words carry and my mother is frozen, suspended in the air. Her attendants have flocked to my father, gathered around him like moths following a candle. Her women weep and look at me now, hopeful.
The God of the Sea regards me disdainfully. ‘Ceto cannot lie. She cannot break her oath.’
I do not understand how he cannot know that this is exactly what she has done, surely Horkos must give him the truth. Then my mouth opens again, and I realize that I, I am giving him the truth.
‘She would. She would see her sister on the sea’s throne.’ Ceto’s grip is slack on my arms. She stares at me, at the lips she has kissed a thousand times, that have now betrayed her. She shakes her head slightly as though some false image was planted there and she wishes to dislodge it.
‘It is no lie, master.’ The words trip out, hasty and unconvincing through numb lips. ‘I believe my sister to be the greater beauty.’
‘A falsehood!’ It is Amphitrite now. Her head moves as if she is a doll, jerky and strange, her body still atop her dolphin. ‘Even I can see that the princess’s radiance outshines mine. I will not live as second best.’
‘Sister!’ Comprehension dawns with despair.
Poseidon roars and the sea roars back. Thunder blasts through the air with such violence that I hunch beneath it, my body bowed almost against my will.
My father’s chair has been lowered to the floor and I cannot see him; he cowers behind his men.
Those that surround him sob and beg for mercy, but they are as irrelevant as sand flies.
‘I will not fall to the tricks of women.’ The sea god’s voice cracks and echoes, rocks being split.
‘I have allowed you all too much freedom these years. This arrogant kingdom should have been met with punishment, but I was merciful.’ Those too-small, too-close eyes are alive with destruction.
I have been kept from him now by his own oath, and I will not be forgiven for it.
‘I swore to stand by Ceto’s judgement, and I will.
I shall not marry Andromeda. Amphitrite shall be my bride. But I will not be merciful again.’
The sea grows. It inflates as though taking a great breath. Higher and higher, a wall of water behind him, it colonizes the sky, darkening the already clouded day. We cannot see its peak.
‘King Cepheus.’ Poseidon addresses my father.
I hear his squeak even from here. He scrambles to hunch at the feet of the god who is a behemoth before him.
‘My lord,’ he pants.
‘I have learned well not to make covenant with women and so it is you I present with a choice. Your kingdom has displeased me. I wish to rip it from the world. I shall wash it away, cleanse the land of your presence, your people.’
No, no, no. The nobles and guards behind him scream and beg. I think of those who stayed to ready the coffers, I think of girls who smell of jasmine selling oil in the markets, I think of Achiroe’s stretch of river filling with salt and death.
‘Please, my lord! Bid me as your servant, I humble myself before you, I will do anything, I—’
Poseidon raging is terrible, but Poseidon smiling is a horror. He interrupts my father’s blithering. ‘Well, you might make a sacrifice. Sacrifices please the gods, I hear.’
‘Yes! Yes! Of course! I will call for an altar! I have a priest!’
Poseidon points to the coast. ‘I take the cape as my altar but you may fetch your priest.’
‘Of course, my lord.’ My father is obsequious, sweating and scraping and pissing on his knees. ‘What would you have me sacrifice?’
‘It is your decision. It must be worth your kingdom.’
Ceto shifts beside me. Her breath is quick, she moves and stands before me, a reflex. My father flounders, stuttering, hands flailing in front of his face like an infant. ‘I – I have nothing worth so much, I—’
‘No? Nothing?’
My father looks at me and he knows. He sees it in Poseidon’s gleaming smile and hears it in the wing beats, surely he can hear the wing beats. Surely they all sense the great looming bird and her punitive rider lurking just out of sight.
My mother, suspended in the air above the ocean, still pinned to her throne, shrieks in rage, but she cannot compete with these friends of the Furies. ‘You swore you would not hurt her! You swore it! You swore you would not harm my Andromeda!’
‘And I will not. I have ordered a sacrifice. It is her father’s choice.’
‘The deed will be yours! The blood on your hands!’
He is awful in the blue-black half-light. He looks at his hands, blithely mocking. ‘I assure you my hands shall remain clean. I am no oath breaker. You seek to humiliate me, to manipulate me, to turn those loyal against me, and you shall not. You shall be humbled.’
She screams her anguished dissent, she snarls and spits. ‘I should never have forsaken my gods for ones so petty and small!’
‘No. You should not have.’ He sounds so bored, so uninterested, that when he pulls her apart, it takes several moments for me to understand what has happened.
He does it easily, for what is she to him but a flapping butterfly?
He tears at her and she separates. Arms wrenched out of sockets, skin torn like silk.
Her chest is split unevenly into three and he holds her head, dangling it absurdly above the rest of her body, as though teasing her neck with the promise of a reunion.
She hangs in pieces that stay in place; they do not crumple in her throne.
She lives still, disconnected, choking on blood that gushes and stains the blue of her kalasiris, turning it violet.
It pools in her dismembered lap and turns the sand to mire.
I think of the vicious slits along bulls’ necks, their blood slurrying the banks of the Nile as we beseeched the gods for a good year.
My mind is heavy and slow, a kind of madness descending, blanket like, to swaddle me against the plunging sickness that lives beyond anguish.
My mother gurgles. It sounds like my name but I cannot know for sure.
Some of her women hurl vomit into the sand.
Others slump into unconsciousness. My father stains his robes with brown.
I feel Ceto at my back, always at my back, keeping me upright, but today I do not need her.
I am locked and hard packed as the desert sand and I cannot move.
‘Cassiopeia, Queen of Aethiopia. For your crime of hubris I sentence you to yield for eternity.’ Poseidon flicks his wrist and my mother spins in the air, her blood arcing bizarrely as the pieces of her hold their form.
Now she hangs, upside down, raining gore.
‘For your dreams, I will give you to the stars.’ Poseidon’s voice rings across the coast. Then the pieces of her are bright and shining, she is on fire, the smell of her burning flesh hot in my nostrils and I cannot even cover my face against it.
I feel as though I too am torn, I too am rent from my heart and stomach, my limbs separate and heavy.
But I am bound in my body, so bound and frozen, my muscles tight with the force of what I am being made to watch bearing down on me, the blanket of madness wrapped tight around me.
My mother opens her mouth to scream but all her cries run red.
‘You will hang like this, in the skies, forever. You will burn like this, in the skies, forever. But do not fear,’ his words are taut with malicious laughter, ‘I will not take your throne.’
She looks at me. And her eyes, bloodied and alight, will be forever blazed in my memory.
Then she is gone.
Inside, I am screaming. Inside, I tear at my face, my hair, I rage at her and for her but I cannot raise my hands to perform such grief. She would not want me discomposed. And the world is blurred and strange. I sway where I stand but do not fall.