Chapter 9 Before
9
Before
For the second day in a row, I wake without pain. But today there’s no joy in this fact, because its absence is tempered by guilt. It conjures the sailor’s image from the shadows, and now that he’s here, all I can do is hide my nerves in a task and pray that Raidne and Pisinoe don’t notice them. I pull myself from my blankets and add some wood to the dying embers in the hearth, then move to prepare tea.
Pisinoe raises her head from her pillow with a smile. “Should we start cleaning the wreckage today?”
The procedure is always the same: collect the scraps of wood and burn them, along with anything else we don’t want, and move the valuables into a sea cave for safekeeping. The work is hard but enjoyable, but that’s beside the point—if we didn’t comb through each wreck, the shore would be so littered with debris that there would be no beach at all. We’d be buried by the ruin.
I hand them each a mug of tea, and we sit before the fireplace, sipping slowly.
“Let’s only worry about the bodies today,” Raidne says. “Once their stink is gone, I want to savor sifting through our treasure.”
“I might head to the beach early,” I say slowly, bracing myself for the coming backlash.
“You don’t want to go to the lake first?” Raidne’s voice is laced with concern. After the last hundred or so times our youth was restored, Pisinoe and I snuck away to the clandestine pool in the center of Scopuli’s forest to admire ourselves in the water’s glassy reflection and to anoint ourselves with it. Although a relatively new habit given our age, it’s already become somewhat of a tradition. Pisinoe’s face crumples so quickly that Raidne doesn’t have time to press me further before she displays a rare moment of kindness. “I’ll go with you, Pisinoe.”
Pisinoe tries to muster a smile, but we both know Raidne’s mood will last only so long. “Why the rush to go to the beach?”
Only some semblance of the truth will keep their curiosity at bay; they’ll be able to smell an outright lie. “She’s trying to tell me something.”
Pisinoe raises an eyebrow and turns to Raidne, whose back has straightened. Even after all these years, they aren’t sure what to believe about the lilies or my insistence that they’re messages from Proserpina.
“I can’t shake the feeling maybe there’s something she wants me to find. It sounds silly, I know, but I just…I want to look.”
What if, out there in the surf, there lies a clue to the man’s purpose?
“Of course,” Pisinoe murmurs, and she slides in to wrap her arms around me. It’s only inside her embrace that I realize I’m shaking. “We’ll join you later, after sunrise.”
“Thank you.” My voice quivers under the weight of both my appreciation for their understanding and the guilt of withholding the entire truth from them. The room falls silent as I collect a bladder of water and a pouch full of meat and nuts they assume are intended for me. I’m about to push my way outside when Raidne speaks.
“Thelxiope, wait—” she says, and I turn to meet her gaze. “If you don’t find anything…try not to read too much into it, all right? If Proserpina could reach you, I know that she would.”
Would she? The words sting for a reason Raidne doesn’t understand, but I force a nod to acknowledge that I heard her, then disappear into the early morning darkness.
The moon’s position in the sky tells me that I have two hours before dawn.
Nerves scratch at my stomach lining as I tumble over the cliff’s edge to descend to the beach. For now I ignore the battered pieces of wood and other detritus strewn about the sand. The tide is low, and the waves gently lap at the ever-shifting edge between the land and the sea. My path is hidden in the shadow of the escarpment, but I still feel exposed as I scramble down the strip of beach untouched by the waves. I’m a lone dot on a wide stretch of shore, an easy target for the what ifs.
What if Raidne and Pisinoe catch me? What if the man’s gone? What if he’s dead?
What if he’s dangerous?
All men are dangerous.
What if Proserpina never speaks?
I force my focus to the vertical cliff face to my left, an unscalable wall of gray granite. The grotto where I left the sailor appears, its maw a dare. The opening is evident only by its darkness, a somehow blacker void against the rest of the cliff’s shadows. I curse myself for forgetting a candle, and a metallic tang rises in the back of my throat—the taste, I realize with surprise, is fear. When was the last time I was afraid on Scopuli? I can’t recall. It’s been so long since I didn’t know exactly what my future held.
My right foot takes a reluctant step forward and my left follows suit. Right, left, right: The words guide me until I’m standing at the cave’s threshold, on the precipice between outside and in. Here, my feet lose their motivation. I waver, allowing shapes the time to slowly emerge from the unimaginable blackness: Small stalactites just a tad brighter than the nothingness behind them hang from the ceiling, and boulders are scattered along the ground. Pools of water, trapped here from the last high tide, circle the stones’ varying circumferences.
The rock where I left the man comes into focus. I crane my neck to try to find his broken frame, but it’s no use. I need to fully enter the cave to know for sure.
Right, left, right. As I peer around the stone, my mouth goes dry. He’s gone.
“Damnit.” I take a few more steps into the cliff’s cavity.
A swift force hits me bluntly in the back of the head, and I fall forward, my face barely missing the cave’s wall. Before I can call out in surprise, a large weight presses into my spine, cramping my wings, pushing me farther into the dirt. A rough hand grabs my hair at my crown, and something cool and metallic slides against my throat. It’s a blade. The irony isn’t lost on me.
This can’t be what she wants, can it?
A deep voice growls in my ear, but he speaks no words. The knife presses harder against my flesh, but it doesn’t yet slice.
I nearly laugh with relief, despite my current position. I was afraid that I’d lost him, but he was lying in wait the entire time, as much a predator as I. His attack caught me by surprise, but he’s woefully mistaken if he thinks he can keep me pinned here. I’m far too strong for him.
“Clever.” The sound of a woman’s voice coming from the winged creature beneath him must shock the sailor, because he lightens the pressure on the blade. “But how are you not enchanted?”
“What are you?” He ignores my question. Although his voice is cold, there’s a sliver of curiosity lurking beneath the ice.
“What, exactly, I can’t say, but I’m the one who saved you. You washed ashore yesterday. I hid you here to keep you safe.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“If you don’t let me help you, you’ll die. Even if you do, you might die still.” Raidne’s favorite sentiment rings in my ears: Why offer these men hope if there is none to be found here?
The man lowers his weapon, but he doesn’t release me.
“Where’s the rest of my crew?” he barks. His voice is rough, as if the sound is passing through sand before it finally crosses over his lips.
“They all drowned, except for you.”
A garbled cry escapes from the back of his throat. It cracks mid-release and hangs in the air between us. The sound, revealing his dehydration, makes me wince.
“That must be difficult to hear, but you’re in danger here. Let me bring you somewhere safer, and then I’ll get you something to drink.”
The promise of water breaks him. He relents and climbs off me, but he doesn’t offer to help me stand. If I were making a list of offenses, this would be his second: first the attack, followed by a serious lack of manners. My jaw clenches. He’s not making a good case for me to save him.
Gods, what am I doing?
I pull myself to my feet, brushing the dirt from my body. When I look at him, he’s staring, a mixture of horror and awe.
Under his scrutiny, I’m desperate for my aging body. Maybe then he wouldn’t be gawking so openly, though it’s not the human parts of me that he’s having trouble reconciling. It’s the feathered legs, the talons of a hawk, and the incredible wings that adorn my back.
I can almost hear his thoughts, for he wears them so readily in his stunned expression: Is she the same as a human woman, between her legs?
It’s a look I’ve seen before.
My wings spread instinctively, but they don’t fit within thenarrow width of the cave. At their full span, they’re twice his height. Still, he stumbles backward, recognizing this display for what it is: A sign of dominance. A warning. “Are you ready?”
I give him a moment to process my question. In conjunction with my appearance, it takes him longer than I prefer, but he eventually concedes with a nod.
“Good. Come,” I say as I brush past him. He can barely stand; he must have used most of his remaining strength to tackle me to the ground. But I don’t help him. He shuffles along behind me, cursing under his breath. Outside, the beach spreads before us, and beyond it, a thin stretch of sea holds the faces of Rotunda and Castle illuminated red in the fiery blaze of dawn.
“See that island across the way? The one lower to the horizon without the crown of rocks?”
Another bob of the head for yes.
“I have to carry you there.”
I don’t give him time to react; he should be thankful for the warning. Without a word, I spread my wings wide and take to the air. We don’t have much time before the rest of the dawn comes spilling over the border between sea and sky, before Raidne and Pisinoe return to the wreck.
My talons slice into the linen shirt near his shoulders, and I’m careful not to slip my razor-sharp claws into his flesh. My sudden closeness elicits a terrified gasp. I relish it.
His shirt tears as I lift him from the ground. The flimsy brown fabric can’t support his weight, and his body sinks inside of it, like a turtle retreating into its shell. When we’re well off the ground, I release him just long enough to encircle my talons around his arms instead of through them. My claws itch to tear into his skin, but I force myself to maintain a loose grip. Any more wounds will kill him, and I can’t risk his death until I know what he’s for.
He makes a variety of sounds as we fly: deep groans, rapid bursts of cursing and oh-oh-ohs, and even soft whimpers as he tries to make sense of what’s happening. Thankfully, the trip isn’t long. I set him down gently onto Rotunda’s eastern beach a few minutes later. The small isle is entirely shrouded in trees, which makes it the ideal spot for hiding him. This sandy haven is the only island in our little archipelago that doesn’t feature staggering, unscalable cliff faces. Our little home is visible from here, a silhouette perched upon Scopuli’s highest crest with the blazing sun rising behind it.
“We have to get to the other side of the island. It’s not far, and I can carry you if you’d prefer, but you must be quiet—”
“No!” the man shouts up at me, shielding his body with raised hands. “I can walk!”
I can’t help myself—the sight of him like that, with his eyes wide, his arms arranged in a defensive posture, brings a laugh to my lips, and I disregard my own demand for silence as I touch my toes to the sand and begin toward the tree line. To my surprise, he follows without arguing. The trees on Rotunda aren’t as high as Scopuli’s. They barely cover the tops of our heads, and we duck to avoid the low-hanging limbs. Katydids blare the final moments of their nocturnal song all around us, but the sailor doesn’t notice.
“Here we are,” I announce as we emerge into a clearing. It sits on Rotunda’s westernmost edge. The sea is visible again through the tangled tree trunks, and the sound of the waves mingles with the bugs’ softening chorus. There’s a small lean-to overlooking the beach, as well as an old singed firepit encircled with stones.
Very early in our exile, we discovered that a different sailor had washed ashore here. He must have instinctively known to hide from the watchful eye of Scopuli, but a poorly timed afternoon fire gave away his secret.
We, in turn, gave him to Ceres.
I take the water bladder from my hip and hand it to the man, fulfilling my earlier promise, but he gulps the liquid down with such a ferocity that most of it doesn’t make it into his mouth at all. It spills over the sides of his parched lips and rolls down his face.
“Slowly, slowly. You’ll make yourself sick if you drink too fast.”
He heeds my warning and lowers the vessel from his face, wiping water from his mouth with the back of a salt-stained arm. His eyes lock onto mine. “Who are you?”
“My name is Thelxiope.” I pause, watching his face crumble at the unfamiliar chain of sounds.
“Thelxiope,” he repeats, stumbling over its music. “What are you?”
“Unlucky, just like you.” The truth is that I don’t know what I am, exactly, besides cursed. I’d never heard of creatures like us before our transformation, and poring over books the sailors brought with them while they were still written in tongues we could read offered very few clues.
Once, several hundred years ago, Raidne found a broken shard of pottery in the surf after a large fleet of soldiers crashed upon our cliffs. The clay was black, and the fragment depicted the image of an ochre bird with a woman’s head. Her eyes were closed and her lips parted, as if either waiting for a kiss or lost mid-song. It was the only clue we ever found, but the sea claimed the rest of the vase, and there were no accompanying words to describe what the image was.
We must have been known. Our sin was too great, our punishment too unique to go unsung. People revel in tales with tragic setups and doomed protagonists, and our story has both. The fact that our history ended with a metamorphosis would only make it more popular, more enduring.
“That’s not what I meant,” he objects. “I have never seen a being—”
“If there’s a name for what I am, I don’t know it,” I confess, cutting his sentence short.
He falls quiet for a moment before responding with another question. “What did you mean by enchanted ? Back in the cave?”
“What do you remember from last night?”
“I was on the lower gun deck during a bitch of a storm…I heard a bunch of commotion above, but before I could make it back up, something hit me.” He touches the side of his head above his ear, the same wound that was oozing last night. The bleeding seems to have stopped, but he still snaps his hand away. “Maybe a lantern? Everything was getting tossed around as the waves battered us. But whatever it was, it knocked me unconscious. I woke up in the cave.”
So that explains his coherence. He was unconscious before our song could reach him.
The sun has risen above the horizon, although it still sits low in the sky. I grow uncomfortable under the man’s watchful eye, which still waits for an answer. Instead, I offer the small satchel of nuts and meat to him, anxious to draw his attention from my form. “Hungry?”
He takes it from me roughly, then lifts softened eyes to meet mine in apology. I scowl back; I don’t want it. “I need to go, but I’ll be back later with more water and food. If you value your life, don’t stray too far from here. And never light a fire during daylight hours unless I’m with you.”
“What happens next?” he asks, a fresh glimmer of fear beneath his words.
“I don’t know,” I admit. I can’t be sure when, or if, his purpose will be revealed to me. Please, Proserpina, tell me what to do. “But first we’ll need to clean those wounds.”
“My name is Jaquob, by the way!” he calls out to me once my back is turned. There’s something in his tone that catches me by surprise—playfulness.
Jaquob. What in the name of the gods am I supposed to do with you?
Raidne and Pisinoe, still glistening from their swim, find me on Scopuli’s beach. Pisinoe’s eyes are large and expecting, desperate to hear if I discovered the message I claimed to be searching for. When I shake my head, her lips turn downward in a sympathetic frown. Raidne doesn’t say a word. Instead, she heads straight for the pile of bodies. All that’s left to do is burn them.
We get to work constructing a wooden platform of slow-burning oak logs, interweaving twigs of birch between them. The birch will catch the entire structure ablaze quickly, while the oak will smolder until only ash remains. When the structure is nearly as tall as us, and stuffed with kindling, we place the corpses, stacking them like logs until they tower over us.
Pisinoe places additional branches and birch bark between the tangles of limbs and lolling heads, and finally, we’re ready. By now the bodies are putrid. Good. The outsides of these men reflect their fetid insides, and their sweet rot lures clouds of flies to the beach. The insects crawl over the corpses’ milky dead eyes, looking for entry. Pisinoe frowns; she feels bad that they, too, will fall victim to the flames. For a moment, I think she’ll try to shoo them away, but instead she nods to Raidne, who strikes two rocks together over the formation.
Chtt, chtt, chtt, the stones chirp before emitting a single spark that sets the entire heap ablaze.
The flames erupt along the kindling and consume the clothes. Eventually, when the conflagration is hot enough, they find the skin and the meat. Darkling smoke billows up toward the heavens, and although Pisinoe says a prayer under her breath, there’s no formal dedication. These bodies are too soiled and too broken to gift in offering. Instead, they burn for no one.
When all that remains is bone, we return to the wreckage. We find personal artifacts—pouches of gold and silver, letters, and the occasional locket—along with a large quantity of animal pelts. Raidne is thrilled to discover a wooden trunk filled with maps, but Pisinoe’s left disappointed when she finds nothing grander than last night’s mirror. A treasure ship this is not. By now the sun is low in the sky, and my stomach rumbles. Jaquob must be starving, but he’ll have to wait.
Only when I’m certain that Pisinoe and Raidne have been claimed by sleep do I cross the small stretch of sea, but not before retrieving two casks of alcohol we discovered in the wreckage. I’ll need them to clean Jaquob’s wounds. Even still, I keep low to the water as I fly, like a seabird searching for food to bring to its children back on the shore.
I used to wonder what it would be like to be those birds, but I no longer torment myself with such thoughts.
Jaquob sits on one of the large gray stones that encircle the firepit, wearing a dark expression. He’s built a small pyramid of wood, but he hasn’t set it aflame.
“You told me not to light it without you.” A pause. “From the looks of it, you had your own fire this afternoon.”
“We had to clear the bodies,” I say.
His jaw tightens. For a moment, I worry he might lash out, but instead he turns back to his log pile to start a fire. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure if you were coming back.”
“Well, here I am.” My tone is harsher than I intend it. “Come on, then. Let’s see how bad it is.”
He nods and peels his tattered shirt from his frame. The sight of what lies beneath it makes my lips press together in a thin line. His body is littered with bruises and cuts, and there’s a large gash on his left flank. He wrapped some fabric around it to stop the bleeding, but the blood that stains the bandage is an angry purple tinged with green. What comes next will be unpleasant.
I kneel before him, and my nose shrivels instinctively; I smell the wound before I see it. The sweet, rancid scent, so much like his compatriots’, climbs into my nostrils and settles there. I do my best to ignore it, distracting myself with peeling the makeshift dressing from his side. Combined with the smell, what I find beneath it makes me gag.
“That bad?” he asks sheepishly.
A piece of coral scooped out a chunk of his side the size of my fist. It left a deep laceration, with yellow tissue pockets scattered throughout the crimson. The flesh surrounding the wound is red and hot. My stomach sinks. It’s likely infected. I press gently on its right edge, and Jaquob hisses out air, recoiling. A creamy pus emerges in my finger’s wake.
I retrieve a clean rag from my bag and douse it with the alcohol.
“This is going to hurt.” I hand him the bottle. He takes a large swig of the liquor before turning his gaze away. I do my best to clean the wound before wrapping it in a fresh bandage, but only the Fates know if it’ll be enough.
I continue sewing the tinier cuts closed, and he continues gulping down alcohol.
“All right, that’s it for the top half,” I say after some time. “Let me see your legs.”
The liquor and the pain have made him delirious, and he chuckles a bit before standing to unbutton his pants. “As you wish.”
They’re so badly torn that they nearly fall from his frame. He retakes his seat next to me. I suddenly feel flushed. This is the first man that I have seen both naked and alive.
Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.
I chant the words to myself, hoping the incantation will ensure my focus. It doesn’t. I can’t help but glance at the limp member between his thighs. I’m curious despite myself.
He catches me looking and snorts. “What, like what you see?”
My stomach turns. What rests between his legs looks just as grotesque as it does on the corpses I’ve gutted. I was certain there’d be some difference in its presentation on a living man, but this revelation only leaves me more baffled. How can such an ugly organ be the root of man’s oafish pride? What about it causes them to strut about so proudly?
“Don’t be foolish.”
I reset my attention to scour his legs for more injuries. Thankfully, his bottom half is mostly unscathed. It’s the wound on his side that remains the most serious.
That wound might kill him.
“You look like a woman,” he says, hiccupping. “A beautiful one, at least from the waist up.”
As if to underscore his point, his eyes linger on my breasts. I forgot to be ashamed of my nakedness before, but now I flush beneath his scrutiny.
“But you’re not a woman, are you? Not a human, anyway. Can you even—”
“You’re right,” I snap back, eager to change the subject. “I had the form of a human once, but that was a long time ago.” I stand up again, putting a few paces between us. “I’ll bring you a fresh set of clothes tomorrow.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he says. “Truly, I’m thankful for your help.”
“You asked me what I am. What about you? What were you doing on that ship?”
“I’m a trapper returning to France. We were only at sea for a few days when the wind blew us off course, and then that fucking storm hit…I’ve been sailing since I was fourteen and crossed the Atlantic three times. Never in my life have I seen a storm like that. It was like Hell opened above us and let loose its fury.”
Most of what he says means nothing to me. I don’t know the names of cities, seas, or countries anymore. But the part about the storm piques my attention. I think about offering my sympathies, but they would be a lie. I sway on my feet, already weary of the worry he’s brought me.
“Are you leaving already? I’ve been alone all day, and apparently my whole crew is dead, and I’ll soon be joining them. Spare a few minutes of your company for a dying man?”
“What would we talk about?” I ask, surprised to find myself considering his request. But there’s a reckless part of me that’s desperate to discover what it is about this man that caused the Goddess of the Dead to intervene on his behalf.
“Anything. Tell me about yourself. How long have you been here?”
“Eons.”
“Were you born here?” The question makes me bristle, and I turn away from him.
“Fine, fine! No more questions!” he pleads, desperate to win back my favor.
“We’re not friends, Jaquob. Don’t make the mistake of believing that we are.”
His mouth snaps closed.
“There are others on this island, like me, and if I’m gone too long…well, they might come looking. And they won’t spare you like I have.”
He bites his lip, his dark eyes wandering back to the flames.
“Of course, Thelxiope. Thank you again.”
I don’t answer as I walk along the shore away from him. Only when I’m around the bend, out of sight, do I unfurl my wings. He’s decided not to fear me for now, but I don’t want to remind him that I look more eagle than woman with my wings spread to their full length. If he saw me in the skies, I’d lose the fragile trust we have built—instinct would take hold, and he would recoil, the way a mouse naturally avoids a cat, or a fish flees from the gaping jaws of a shark. Until I know what Proserpina wants with him, I need him to trust me.
I take to the heavens.
Every time that I fly, song builds in my stomach instinctively. It takes all my self-control to keep the notes buried deep in my body, away from my lips. The air tonight is still, and if I let it, my aria would carry across the distance to Jaquob’s ears. It would drive him mad, straight into the sea to try to find me. He would drown, like all the others, and then I’d never discover his use.
When my feet finally touch the ground again on Scopuli’s western cliffs, a stifled hum bursts from the back of my throat. It’s a small concession to my instincts, but until I know Jaquob’s purpose, it will have to be enough.