Chapter 25
The Surf
Delphine returns me to the shore where she found me. Amphitrite accompanies us. We swim in silence until we break. I gasp in cool, light air, coughing up salt. Amphitrite places her hand upon my back and the internal chafing abates. We regard each other.
‘Thank you,’ I say, when I can breathe.
‘Thank you,’ she replies. ‘I could not save her. So thank you.’ I do not argue. She could have done more. It was not enough. But these words are so tired that they are meaningless now and I simply nod.
‘When will she come?’
‘Soon.’
‘And – she will come to me?’
Amphitrite angles her head. It reminds me of her. ‘Of course.’
‘How – how will she know where to find me?’
A rare smile. ‘Look up.’
I do. I see it at once. There is a patch of night I have avoided for ten years. The shape of an upside-down chair was too clear to see, and the stars burned so brightly my eyes would water.
But the stars face the other way now, the throne dignified and upright. Beside them I trace the undulating line of the sea snake, curving at the ends. They burn together, a mellow, pleasant glow.
‘When she is not in her body she will be froth and spindrift, she will see all the sea. And when she is in her body she will turn to the stars. They will be above your shores, above you, always. They will guide her home.’
My throat is tight, the moment squeezes me. I feel as if I am dreaming but I know I am not because I never dreamed of her.
I nod and Amphitrite sinks beneath the surface. She was never one for goodbyes. Delphine bumps my leg with her nose. I pat her head.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper again, ‘go well.’
I wait for her. The waves crest gently against the shale, rolling in, teasing me as I scan every ripple for her.
Where I stand, toes just touching the sea that I had once been so afraid of, I am dwarfed by the line of cliffs jutting out against the night sky, curving away.
I can see Tiryns, high up, in the distance to the east, and if I turn, I can just about see Mycenae, its sloping grooves dusting the hilltops in the north.
I am small here, unnoticed. The stars are dimmed, not so aflame, their backs turned because they know what it is to be always watched.
The moon waxes past its half, on its way to being whole, but Selene draws a curtain of cloud across herself, allowing us our privacy.
She forms from the gathering surf. My first thought is that she is free, so free, it thrills me to see her so spread and open and reaching.
Then she is flesh and is moving for me, running, the water parting without a splash because it would not dare stand between us.
She draws to a halt, shimmering, momentarily stopping, half a step away from me.
‘Meda?’
‘Ceto.’
That is all it takes before we are upon each other. My face is in her hair, my mouth is on her cheeks, her neck, she is my hunger, she is my heart, she is my sweet worm, soft in my arms, and I, I am her Meda.
There will be time for words. There will be nights and mornings and walks in the forest. There will be dips in rivers and shallow pools, there will be the ripe fruit of secrets.
There will be a future, one of herself scattered to all the seas and returning, always returning, to me.
But for now, we are meeting in a great, driving rush, for now we are the river and its mouth and she will consume me at last.
I cannot bear not to touch her, I wish I could touch all of her at once.
She is naked and I join her and the thrill of our skin, pressed and close once more, sends tears pouring from my eyes.
She licks them away greedily, licks all of me greedily.
She and I are still of an age in appearance, but my body is much changed.
I am fuller figured, have borne the fruit of my abundance and now bear the evidence.
Ceto delights in this. Her lips are at my breasts, across the new swell of my belly, between my thighs; we are a feeding frenzy, chaotic and starved, and when our lips meet we sob against each other’s mouths.
It is agony, this bliss, it will tear me and I will let it. ‘More,’ she begs me. ‘More, Meda.’
For ten years she has been kept in the dark and cold.
I would see her glowing above me. Her back arches and she cries my name.
It is everything, my name on her lips, it is the truest thing ever said.
We fall back into each other so easily, the old rhythms of pleasure, mouths and hands finding familiar places but sensation all the more heightened for the time that has passed.
I can feel the building, the kind I have not felt in so long, reach from my toes through my spine.
She makes low sounds in her throat, breaking away from me to gasp.
‘Ceto,’ I reach for her, our tongues clash, swirling the taste of ourselves together, making new vows and promises, ‘my worm, my love.’ It has been so long since I stared into her eyes and they leave me freshly breathless, I cannot look away.
I had forgotten how dark they are, how depthless and plummeting, and I silently curse my treacherous memory before pulling her before me, legs tangled, facing each other.
My other hand is in her hair once more – gods, I would like to die drowning in that hair – then moves to her neck, squeezing very slightly, mine.
Her cries are rough and tinged with a whimper and each sound is ringing crystal in my veins.
They become more frantic, closer together, her thighs shake, she is close to the rupture and I am going to get to see it all.
‘Come with me.’
I will never go without her again. And so when it happens, we share it.
Trembling both, crying both, hot and wet and kissing tears from each other’s cheeks.
It cocoons us, a tight coil of pleasure, and the release, the heady moan of each other’s names, is all the more satisfying because each breath brings the taste of homecoming on the air.
We lie there, in each other’s arms, as we had in those nights of our shared girlhood.
The sand clings to us like Aethiopia’s dust, sticking to the sweat that coats our skin.
We do not think of tomorrow. The knowledge that there will be a tomorrow is, for now, enough.
We are to each other what we always were. So it is. So it will always be.