Chapter Eight
I catch my breath.
He is tall and shrouded in darkness, the cloak whipping around him like a storm within a storm. I feel my heart seize, and I force myself not to shy away or shut my eyes.
“She does mean to kill me, then.”
The cloaked man stops in his tracks. Perhaps he had not expected me to speak; his cloaked face turns, as though surprised.
“The goddess?” he says. “Yes. She means for you to die.”
His voice is deep and low. My heart pounds so hard I can’t hear the ocean, or the screaming of gulls, or of the wind. It pounds so hard I feel I must bend double to keep it in my chest. Before me on the ground lies my robe, trampled and discarded. I pull it around me; I will have what dignity I can. But still when I speak, it takes everything I have.
“And you are here to do the job.” At least I stand upright as I say it. I may be shackled and alone, but I will not let the gods see me cower.
The black fabric of his cloak shimmers—it moves like black light, finer than any fabric I have ever seen.
“No. I have not come to kill you, Psyche.”
I stare at his hooded face.
“You know my name.”
“I know many things,” he says. His voice is resonant and calm. It matters little to him what becomes of me.
“You are some kind of messenger, then,” I conjecture. “You are here to bring me to some worse place.”
“I am not.” He pauses. The hood shifts again. “What if I told you there was a way to escape this?”
I stare at him. Perhaps he is no messenger of the gods after all, and merely a fool. Some tramp or vagrant too senseless to run with the rest of the crowd.
“So, you carry the keys to this upon your person?” I say, showing him the shackle at my ankle.
He sounds impatient now.
“That is not the problem. The problem is that you have attracted the eye of Aphrodite, and the mistrust of your town. If I were to release you, where would you run? Home?”
With that, he has my attention. He’s right. Even if I could escape right now, there could be no return to Sikyon. The neighbors would report me; Father and Dimitra would be punished too. One way or another, they will have their pound of flesh.
“And when Aphrodite hears you have run from her,” the stranger continues, “do you think she will stop looking?”
I swallow.
“Once the goddess has her eyes on a mortal, there is little hope of concealing yourself from her. This darkness around us—you see it?” He gestures. “How the dawn has retreated even as the sun was due to rise? This unnatural darkness hides you from the eyes of the gods. But it will not last long.”
I stare. Who is this man, and what does he know?
“While it lasts, that is our window to save you. There is a place I can take you, where you will remain sheltered from Aphrodite’s sight. It is…” He hesitates, and the fabric of his cloak ripples softly in the wind. “It is a veiled place. You will be safe from her there.”
I breathe shakily. He is a madman, he must be.
“I do not believe you. This veiled place you speak of, it does not exist.” I have been taught well enough that the eyes of the gods can find us anywhere.
Beneath the hood, he stiffens.
“Do not believe me, then,” he says. “It is not for me to cajole you. But I warn you—you do not have much time.”
He turns toward the horizon, and I see the greenish glow there has thickened. Churning ripples pool at the base of the cliff. I stare at them.
“Then you know what comes for me?”
“I can guess,” he answers.
I force my breath steady. If this man is not to be my executioner, then surely whatever’s in the water is.
“If you could do the things you say, sir”—I look at him, amazed at my own boldness, or stupidity—“what would you ask of me in return?”
I know perfectly well that no offer of help, particularly such miraculous help such as this, comes without strings.
The dark cloak seems to shimmer. His voice is measured, dispassionate.
“Obedience,” he says.
A chill goes through me.
“This is what the women of Sikyon swear when they wed, is it not?”
I stare back at him.
“And why do you speak of weddings, sir?”
His head tips to the side, hinting at impatience.
“Aphrodite has already put her claim on you: there is but one way for me to unseat that claim. Wed me, and her claim on you must sit second to mine. That is the only way for me to offer you safe haven.”
I’m speechless.
“I—I cannot marry you, sir!” This faceless, black-cloaked stranger!
But he sounds almost… amused ?
“You need not be so horrified. You would offer me some companionship, that is all. I will make no demands of your body. In fact, I demand very little.”
“Just my obedience,” I mutter—I do not forget that word so easily.
“Your obedience,” he agrees. “Though I say so myself, it is a fine offer, when you consider…” He throws a glance once more toward the cliffs, and the shadowy water. Beyond him, the sea is choppier. The light pulses.
I shake my head. This outrageous proposition…My mind flashes to the wedding I was supposed to have: riding in a carriage to Yiannis’s house; feasting; my family there beside me.
“But sir…who are you? What are you?”
The hood shifts.
“I cannot tell you.”
I stare at him, incredulous.
“What do you mean, you cannot tell me?”
“I mean it is forbidden.”
“But…it is impossible.” It is madness even to contemplate it. “You hide your face from me. How can I trust you?”
I feel him looking back at me from beneath his hood. He shrugs.
“How can you not?” he counters. “It cannot be helped. The bargain must be made. If you wish me to take you from here, it must be so. Decide, Psyche. Your time has all but elapsed.”
As he says it, something lashes out of the water, something otherworldly. A tentacle of sorts—but far too big to belong to any octopus. I smother a cry of horror. When I recover enough to look back, the stranger’s head is inclined to one side. Studying me.
Waiting.
“This…this marriage , then.” The very word seems unreal. “It would not be…physical?” My whole body seems to flush as I say it.
“Nothing will be forced upon you.”
“And what… tasks would you have me perform?” I can’t help thinking back to that word, obedience . It’s true, it’s in our vows back home; I would have had to swear as much to Yiannis. Only now do I realize how sinister such a vow can be.
“Very few,” he says dryly. “I do not seek a servant.”
“So what, then, would you have me obey?”
“The rules of my home,” he says, impatience clipping the edges of his words now. “Designed to protect us both.”
No: I must be mad. The very thought of it—yoking myself to this stranger who comes from the darkness…
“Even if I were to accept,” I say boldly, “there could be no true marriage. There is no temple here, there would be none of the holy rituals.” In our land, marriage requires many things. Without these things no union can be sealed; nothing would hold either in the eyes of the gods or of the people.
He waves a hand. “We have no need of those things. Do you know so little of the Old Laws?”
I don’t know why, but at those words another shiver passes through me.
“I have never heard of the Old Laws.”
“So much is forgotten,” he says, as if to himself. Then he turns back to me. “There are laws which are older even than the gods, Psyche. Laws which even the gods themselves must yield to. All we need do,” he says, “is bind your words.”
My words. I look back down at the sea, at its churning green. The tentacled thing is submerged again, but I’m not fool enough to believe it has gone. As for the man who stands in front of me…no honest man need hide his face. My words, it seems to me, are the only thing I have left.
But what choice do I have?
“Very well,” I say. “Bind them.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He steps toward me…and then away. He’s walking to the path that led me here, toward the scrub and vegetation that grow scantily on this forsaken spot, a little ways from the cliff edge. When he comes back to stand before me, he’s closer than he was before. He’s taller than I had realized. There is a scent of him: of incense, of the woods at night. And there’s something in his hand—a peach. One of those shriveled, wild peaches that grow here by the rocks, stunted and dry.
Involuntarily I take a step back.
He holds out the fruit to me, a shriveled, salty thing. His hand is the first part of him I have seen uncovered. It consoles me a little to see that there is nothing fearful in it. On the contrary: it is bronze in color, large and strong, not monstrous.
“Take it,” he says. “Eat it.”
I stare at the withered little fruit in the center of his palm.
“Your time is almost over. I will not wait for you, once the beast comes.” He plucks the peach from his palm and holds it up for me to see.
“Under the Old Laws, I must make you a gift of food. In offering it, I bind myself to you. In accepting it, you bind yourself to me.”
He drops it into my palm and from sheer instinct my hand tightens around it. It’s warm from his hand.
Could it be poisoned? Or perhaps one bite will trick me into something worse—will fasten me to some more dreadful fate than any I have yet imagined.
“Isn’t there some other way?”
He folds his arms, not deigning to answer. The rock beneath me shakes as something—something I dare not imagine—smacks the side of the cliff with its mighty limb. My hands shake; the peach slips. I fumble and catch it before it hits the ground, and down in the water I see another flick of a scaled, greyish tentacle.
I raise the peach to my lips, thinking of all the reasons I should not bite into it. One above all stands out. No honest man hides his face .
I bite the peach.
*
An explosion of gold floods my eyes. My knees buckle. This sensation…I cannot call it taste. I feel it everywhere, my mouth, my throat, then flashing through my blood, to every thread of my being. It is exquisite and voracious. It is a tortuous kind of hunger.
More , I think blindly.
The euphoria spreads through me, feeding its own desire like a snake eating its own tail. I feel it in the tips of my fingers, the soles of my feet; down my spine, tingling in the pit of my stomach.
I open my eyes, breathing hard.
More.
I raise the peach to my mouth for another taste, but a hand closes around my wrist.
“That’s enough.”
I wrench at my hand, trying to free it. “Another bite!”
But he lifts the peach from my fingers and smoothly tosses it toward the cliff. I bolt, my whole body yearning after it, but the chains yank at my ankle and pain rips through me. The force pulls me to the ground. I wheeze with the impact as a few feet away, the peach rolls over the edge of the cliff.
If I hadn’t been chained down, I might have thrown myself into the sea after it.
“It was enough.” He speaks from behind me.
My breathing starts to quiet.
“What was that?” I pant from the ground. “And why could I not have more?”
“Come,” he says. “It is done. The bond is sealed.”
He reaches toward my ankle and, as if the metal is mere clay, he breaks the shackle open. Then he lifts me to my feet. I feel weak, but whether from the cold, from fear, or from that bewitched fruit, I can’t say. It takes me a moment to realize that I am free.
“I wouldn’t try to run,” he says, as though reading my thoughts. “You would regret it.”
Then black shadows are quivering at his back, taking shape. It takes me a moment to understand what’s happening.
They’re wings.
Great dark wings like a dragon’s, unfolding from his back.
This is no man.
“No,” I breathe. “Get back. Get away from me.”
A warm hand grips me.
“Foolish girl. Don’t you see where you’re stepping?”
I look down. I’ve backed up almost to the cliff’s edge. My heart leaps, staring down at the vertiginous drop, the choppy white spray.
The black-winged creature closes the gap between us, then lifts me into his arms, the way I have seen brides in our town carried over the threshold of their new husbands’ homes.
Bride .
What have I done?
And then, before I have time to weigh all my terrible mistakes, we’re airborne. I would shriek, but no sound leaves my mouth. I picture myself plummeting, like Icarus. There’s nothing around us but empty air. Nothing but his grip keeping me from dropping down that ever-increasing distance into the inky sea.
“Breathe,” he says, and I realize I have not been.
“You are…you are a demon,” I say at last. The words are flat. It is not a question.
I almost think I hear a smile in his voice.
“But not so bad as the other.”
The other.
The sea is already far below, but not so far that I can’t see a flash of green; a long, scaled tentacle thrashing against the rock face. Not so far that I can’t hear a howl of its inhuman, disappointed rage.
“Where are you taking me, demon?” I whisper.
And then he murmurs a word— skotos, “darkness”—and that’s the last thing I hear before a great fog overtakes me, and everything turns to black.