Chapter 24
The Sea
I summon the guard and tell him to give my husband a message. ‘I am safe. I am following the goddess’s path. I will be home soon.’
I leave the temple. I am earth and stone, I am more stone than the columns, I could crush them with my will alone.
The avalanche of what has been presented to me falls and falls, slamming into me but I will not be moved.
I become the avalanche instead, I seize each rock and grow around it; I will crash as a cascade upon them.
The sea is before me, beyond the tree line, the forest that runs the length of the cliffs and connects to my own dear forest, further south, in Tiryns.
The glittering streak is deceptive in its tranquillity, but you cannot deceive the deceiver.
I will rip it until it is naked and uncover its secrets.
I will comb its depths and take what is mine. I will find her.
I do not have a plan as to how to get there, I do not know where to find the cliff path, through the trees and down to the shore, but I do not care.
I will walk. I have never liked horses anyway.
I look at the acropolis of Mycenae, high on a hill like Tiryns, and then turn from it, heading into the relative gloom of the trees.
The sun continues its decline above me, and my shadows become increasingly lengthy.
This forest is younger than mine, lighter, the earth not so packed and pressed with feet and stories.
This makes it harder to keep my bearings, each shrub is so similar to its sibling.
I know I must keep moving south and west and try to use the shifting light to navigate but I do not know this forest. I refuse doubt and worry.
I will wander ten years more if I must. What is time to I who have waited?
I see them and my heart is lightning. Mushrooms. I think of Perses’ dimpled hands, his little nose wrinkling in imitation of mine.
I smell it; freshwater. I am drawn towards it as though it calls my blood, and I send a word of thanks and love to my grandmother on the wings of a sunshine-yellow bird.
The stream and I laugh together in happy reunion as I follow it.
It will take me where I need. I walk and walk and walk.
I do not allow myself to think about her, not yet.
I have never been one for future planning, I put one foot in front of the other and continue.
The sun is behind me and far away, the forest darkens as the relay plays out above me; Apollo to Astraeus, Astraeus to Selene.
I do not mind. The moon will be half full, increscent and gleaming, the Cyclopes will drink well tonight, I think, smiling to myself.
It is as if my thought conjures her. She moves so quietly for one so large, but I suppose she knows the forest and can anticipate the cracking of twigs as she can the movement of her own limbs. She slides out from between the trees as if it is a gap between worlds and crosses the stream towards me.
Autochthe bows her head. ‘My queen.’
‘Autochthe. It is good to see you.’
‘And you also.’
‘What brings you here on this night? This is not your usual territory.’
She blinks her large, solitary eye. ‘I was sent to you.’
‘Sent? By whom?’
As ever with Autochthe, I am given the impression of impatience but I am not well versed in the expressions of her kind and may be reading her wrongly. ‘The one who guards forests and wild things. She cannot be seen to aid you herself and so bade me come instead.’
All those years knelt at her quick feet, my head pressed to the silver thread of woven moonlight. So I am not wholly forsaken. ‘Artemis has my thanks.’
‘She said she owes you twice over and would right the old wrongs.’
I think of two arrows, one gold and one silver, speeding through the air to strike their targets true.
‘How are you to help me, kind Autochthe?’
The Cyclops shifts again, this time, I think, with pleasure. ‘I am to bear you on my back to the shoreline. I can move through the forest faster than you and we will reach it before the twilight fades.’
I climb on to her back. She is indeed faster than me. The trees whip by and I shield my face, protecting it from branches and the chilly wind.
‘Do you not get cold, Autochthe?’
‘Yes, but our skin is thick and we enjoy our lives of sensation.’
I ponder this. ‘How are your fellows?’
‘They are well.’
‘You spoke of … of sisters and mothers and daughters?’
‘Yes.’
‘You spoke of lovers?’
‘Yes.’ I am silent a while. Then Autochthe speaks again. ‘There are many things that live in forests, among the one-eyed wild things, that do not live among mortals and men.’
‘But … do they … those things … not get lonely? Or cold? Do they not mind being …’ I struggle for articulation, ‘never seen? Never spoken of?’
Autochthe makes a quick, cracking sound and I realize she is laughing.
It is loosed and unselfconscious. ‘We are seen! We are seen by each other and by those who want to see. For us, this is enough. Those that don’t see are blind for a reason and often violence follows in the wake of their knowledge. ’
She runs on and I feel a little foolish.
I have never cared about being seen, in fact I have despised it, the eyes too often belonging to predators, looming at me like wolves in the dark.
But there is something about what she lays out before me.
I catch a taste of it on the breeze as we run and what it stirs is terrifyingly strange but sweetly familiar. The flavour of an alternative.
She turns right and the slope of the forest suddenly dips sharply before us, the sea and open sky drawn into view from behind the curtain of trees. She stops and I clamber down; I do not want her to have to leave the comforting cover of the forest. She has done so much already.
‘Thank you, Autochthe.’
‘I am told that the second repayment waits at the shore.’
‘You are a good friend.’
She dips her head and places her large hand across my chest. My heart beats a few moments. She says, ‘You should leave your cloak behind. You will be cold when you return.’
I nod. I appreciate her kindness. I appreciate her when. Another might have said if.
She steps back and is swallowed by the trees.
I hasten to the shore, slipping slightly on the loose shale and sand. I feel it in the mutable ground beneath my feet; I am not wanted here.
I do not care.
I remember standing on the rocks with my grandmother as a child feeling abject horror at the thought of such vast bellows.
I had so striven in my avoidance of this place that I had never dreamed that I might one day intentionally enter the abyss.
I half laugh at my insanity. But she always made me my maddest self.
My freest, fullest self. I shuck off my sandals and step into the surf.
At once it teems and pools around me, white-topped waves whispering to each other, rearing and shying and bucking away from me.
They flee my feet and as the water parts before me something emerges.
It is absurd to recognize a dolphin, but I do recognize her. She is the one Amphitrite had sat astride, almost ten years ago to the day.
I do not understand her language of clicks and squeaks, but I do not need to.
The sleek body shines silver as the moon moves through clouds, across the edge of the earth.
She offers me her fin and I climb atop her back, trying to position myself as Amphitrite had, all those years ago.
The dolphin begins slowly, as though letting me acclimate, drawing me out and away from the shore.
My legs trail through the water. It is cold and seeps through my chiton, the frigid touch of misgiving sliding up my body with it.
This is ill-advised. I think of my children, alone and motherless if I do not return.
But to turn back now would be to deny them the best of me.
I will teach them to be brave and loyal and cunning. First, I must teach myself.
We submerge. It is as anathema as I had expected.
My naiad blood prevents me from drowning as I let out the last of my air but the salt is a fire in my chest when I breathe in again.
Down and down we dive. It chafes at my skin, burns my nose and my eyes and offers no respite when I am raw and flayed.
Down and down. Past the bright glow of fish, flowering from plants that I have never seen and have no name for.
Down and down. The murkiness swallows the light and eats us alive but the dolphin is steady. She knows these waters.
In the distance I see a shining red. For a foolish, hopeful moment, I think it is fire.
But then the palace is upon us, and I have never seen anything so warm in tone look so cold.
It exists in dips and arches, gaps and holes, nooks and crannies.
It is full, full of Nereids and other creatures of the deep, things with tentacles and scales and fins as sharp as their teeth – but all is silence.
All is muted, livid and heavy, as though dark wine has muddled my senses.
For a moment I fear that I will not be able to speak down here, that I won’t be able to plead my case.
I climb off the dolphin and say, ‘Thank you, friend,’ and my voice is there.
Hoarse and rounded, each word saturated, but it is there.
She swims away and I think she is leaving me but after a few paces she turns back to look, and I see that she intends me to follow.
Ignoring the glaring, hostile eyes of many, I do so.
We swim around the side of the palace and through an archway framed with pearls and shells, weaving in and out of coral megaliths. I am so turned around that I know I don’t have a hope of leaving this place without a guide. I swim closer to the dolphin.
Eventually we turn a corner and I see a familiar flash of bone-white skin, hair so closely matched with the surrounding coral that her face is even more luminous here, in this shadowy half-light.