Chapter 13 Before
13
Before
T helia!
Thelia…!
“Thelia?”
I sit upright with a start. My hand rushes to my heart; it burns with terror, and it hurts to breathe. Pisinoe rests beside me, and she rubs my back, coaxing me into consciousness, into leaving the dream world behind.
“You were whimpering. It sounded like a nightmare,” she coos, pulling my head to her chest. I nod and slide my arms around her waist.
“Was it about Proserpina again?”
Ah, yes. Jaquob’s tale’s distortion of Dis is only a new twist in a recurring nightmare, but the image of that emaciated face and those bloodied lips has me shaken. I nod again.
“You’ve been spending so much time alone. Have you been looking for more signs?”
I want to tell her that I’ve been taking care of the last sign I received. That he would have made a piss-poor sacrifice before, but even though I’ve nursed him back to health, I’ll never give him to Ceres. I’ll use him to force Proserpina to speak to me again, and if she doesn’t, he’ll sail away from here with my blessing. But I don’t.
“I’ve been looking for her everywhere, Pisinoe.”
“Have you found anything new?”
“I would tell you if I had.” The lie slips from my lips with such ease that I startle myself. I expect Pisinoe to whisper into my ear that she knows I would, but she doesn’t. Instead, she strokes my hair a few more times before releasing me from her embrace.
“I have the metal pieces that you asked for. The small ones are there,” she says, motioning to a large bag that sits beside the door. Its seams are nearly bursting, mostly with nails. Pisinoe spends the most time poring over the treasure we keep in the sea caves. I’d never be able to locate the various parts that Jaquob described without her help. She was thankful for the task, a welcome excuse to dig through her hoard, but her next question doesn’t come as a shock. “And the rest are on the beach. That anchor especially was heavy. What are you going to do with them, exactly?”
“I’m repairing a small boat.”
She raises an eyebrow, no doubt recalling all our failed escape attempts.
I chew my bottom lip, waiting for the lie to materialize on my tongue. “Because of the women who washed ashore. What if more arrive, but alive? We’re cursed to stay here, but that doesn’t mean they would be. If it happens again, I want them to have a way out.”
Pisinoe watches me, a mixture of sadness and relief in her stare. “You’ve been acting so strangely recently…so removed, so preoccupied…First the lily, then this. Try not to burden yourself with too much.”
I smile softly, but it’s too late to heed her advice. I’m trying to force a goddess’s hand with a man she guided me to find, while hiding his existence so that he doesn’t become another sacrifice to her mother—it’s quite literally too much.
But after all this time, I’ll do anything to hear that voice again, even if it’s scolding me from the shore as he sails off into the horizon.
And so I help Jaquob build his escape.
Although he requested parts from his wrecked ship, he wanted only hardware and other metal baubles. When I offered to bring some of the ship’s original wood, he bristled at the idea. Who’d want to try to escape in a coffin? Instead, we go to work with fresh materials, although obtaining new timber is no small task. Since there are no large trees on Rotunda, I spend several nights collecting wood from the southern end of Scopuli. An entire week elapses where Jaquob and I hardly speak because I’m too preoccupied with transporting the felled lumber from my island to his, from the moment the sun slips behind the horizon to the moments before it returns in the morning.
Jaquob wasn’t wrong: Building a boat is a long process. Scopuli’s trees lose their leaves, and one moon cycle slips into another before the craft looks sailable. Its progress makes me more anxious to complete it, especially since Proserpina’s campaign of silence continues. Fear’s roots entangle themselves inside me—what if Jaquob leaves, and she still doesn’t speak?
“Does it need to be this large?” I ask him early one evening. He’s doubled over the side of the boat, working to get the center thwart in place, one of the bench-like pieces of wood where he’ll sit during his voyage. Cold air whips across the sand, a reminder that summer is a distant memory.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be at sea,” he cautions. “I need plenty of room for supplies, especially since I don’t know where I’ll land. We’ve maintained good relations with the Algonquians, but I might be mistaken for British—or worse, Spanish—before I have a chance to explain myself.”
I mull over his words. I’d have no idea how much food to bring, what supplies to pack, how to navigate the seas, but such questions are facts of life for Jaquob.
Soon we’ll no longer be building, and we’ll need to start packing. What comes next is still hidden from me. Is it truly possible for him to escape? He isn’t cursed, but I’m haunted by the image of our beautiful boat shattering across the reef once he reaches the curse’s boundary, drowning him in the process. What lesson would that be—to watch him die beneath the waves after all this?
What do you want from him, Proserpina? From me?
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” he asks as he wipes his hands on a small piece of cloth. His eyes are hopeful. “What’s here for you?”
I turn away, looking out to the west. “I can’t leave, Jaquob. You know that.”
“I know you say that,” he retorts, coming up behind me to place a hand atop my left wing. I shudder. His touch underscores the differences between us. “But I don’t know why. You don’t give me much to work with. How is it that after all these weeks, I still know so little about you?”
“Because you love to hear yourself talk,” I tease, and then add, “My sisters are here. I can’t abandon them.”
“Ah, yes. The infamous sisters, the two soulless harpies who will surely kill me if they ever learn of my existence.” His tone is light. He doesn’t grasp the magnitude of his situation. “I managed to win you over, didn’t I?”
He spins me around to face him, placing both hands on my shoulders. His eyes are so dark that they’re almost black.
“You didn’t win me over,” I whisper, but the words aren’t convincing.
“Then why didn’t you immediately take me to your sisters as soon as you discovered me on the beach?”
“A feeling overcame me, and I acted without forethought. I’ll admit that Pisinoe might be persuaded to let you live for sheer curiosity, but Raidne would never allow it.”
“How would they kill me?”
The question catches me by surprise, momentarily seizing my tongue and, with it, my ability to speak, as images of his sacrifice swirl before me. I can so clearly picture his dazed expression in the flickering light of the ritual cave’s fire, his wrists clamped in the irons, his artery throbbing in that muscular throat—but now that I know him, would I still be able to draw a blade across it? Would I still be able to step over his entrails to spill the last of his life onto the floor of the cave?
“Be glad you’ll never find out.”
“God knows how I’ll explain what I’ve seen these past months should I survive this ordeal.”
I smile weakly and retreat from his touch. “How much work is left?”
“I still need to add the mast, the boom, and the yard, but the construction should be done within the next few days.”
“The next dark moon is in five days,” I think out loud. “That’s when you should go. It’ll be the safest then. Is that enough time for you to gather supplies?”
“Yes, it should be plenty, especially if you bring more fruits.” Jaquob winks. Scopuli hasn’t withheld her bounty from him, and he insists on catching his own game, which is for the best. Raidne and Pisinoe would notice if a large quantity of the salted meat went missing.
My eyes wander up to check the time. A waning crescent punched out of the black fabric of the night hangs overhead. It casts little light, which brings me comfort. The billowing smoke from the bonfire would only be visible from the hovel with the light of a full moon, and we are mere days from its exact opposite.
I catch Jaquob watching me as he tosses another piece of driftwood onto the blaze before bringing a bottle of liquor to his lips. The fire crackles greedily to consume the new fuel, but he’s too lost in the sight of me to notice. He stares at me often: sometimes with a mixture of wonder and fear, and other times with confusion, as if he can’t decide if what stands before him is real. Right now his expression is leaning toward the latter, his brows furrowed so deeply it looks like the two black lines might connect across the bridge of his crooked nose.
“What is it?” I ask, arms drifting across my chest defensively.
“You barely speak, you know. Unless I speak to you first.”
I sigh. “I’ve already told you—”
“I know, I know. We’re not friends.”
Hearing my own words tossed back at me makes me bristle. “Yes, but also…It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone new, and most of what my sisters and I communicate to each other can be said with little words.”
“There, something I can work with!” Jaquob offers me the liquor, and I shake my head. “Tell me about the last new person that you met.”
Those first sailors appear in my mind, their teeth stained black with wine, and behind them, Dis. His eyes are so dark that I can barely make out his pupils, smoldering with such intensity that I can’t decide whether to look away in terror or let them set me ablaze. I can still feel the heat of his breath on the side of my face as he whispered in my ear, his fingernails digging into the supple flesh of my young arms, his coarse black beard tickling my cheek.
“I can’t remember,” I say after a time, though my shaking voice betrays my lie. But Jaquob doesn’t press me further. It’s a little after midnight. I feel myself growing restless, eager for the comfort of my pallet. My sisters notice my mood swings. They don’t question me yet, but how much longer can I expect them to leave me be?
He senses my nerves and chuckles softly. “I’m only here a few more days, and yet you’re still desperate to return to them. You’ll be thrilled once I’m officially gone.”
I’ll be thrilled once she speaks to me again, but that isn’t what he wants to hear. “I’ll miss the excitement you’ve brought. It’ll be strange to not wonder what you’re doing during the day, to not sneak out to see you at night.”
“Does that mean you’ll miss me?” He grins so wide, I can’t help but laugh softly in return. “It looks like I did manage to win you over.”
“I suppose you did, Jaquob.”
The concession placates him, and he shakes his head toward the east. “Well, then. You’d best be off. I wouldn’t want your sisters to come searching for you.”
I embrace him in goodbye, taking note of the way he lets his hands linger on my body. It makes me ache with desire, but not for him.
Where are you, Proserpina? Why don’t you answer me?
When I pull away, his smile falls; his eyes cloud with disappointment. I cup his face with my palm and then turn toward the trees with a gentle smile.
He doesn’t ask me to stay.
I’ve barely left the glow of his bonfire when rustling disturbs the path ahead. The noise is too loud to belong to some timid mouse or bewildered songbird navigating through the barren beach plum branches. Before I can retreat and warn Jaquob to hide, Pisinoe emerges from the darkness, wearing no jewels. When she finds me, she stops and rests her hands on her hips. Her pose is more than accusatory; it’s hostile.
“Oh—!” I stammer, trying to buy time that I know I don’t have. My strange behavior the past few months has finally come to a head. This fact is etched in the severe angles of Pisinoe’s frown; it’s been centuries since I’ve seen her this upset. “What are you doing here?”
She doesn’t take the bait.
“What’s going on, Thelxiope?” she asks, her tone saying for her what her words don’t: Do not lie to me.
My face flushes, and I’m thankful that it’s cloaked in shadow.
“What do you mean?” I try to feign innocence, but I hear the guilt that drips from every word. It paints shame across my features. These past weeks have given me practice at speaking tiny falsehoods and deceits, but I haven’t been confronted so directly. I crumble beneath Pisinoe’s growing anger. Thank gods she found me and not Raidne—her fury would already have me leading her to Jaquob like a dog with its tail between its legs.
“Stop. I know you’re hiding something. That you have been since the wreck. We’ve been waiting for you to come to us, to admit it, but our patience has worn out.”
“What are you talking about?” I squeak. “I’m around every day. I cleaned the wreck; I prepare meals. None of my responsibilities have fallen off. So what if I take a few longer walks in the mornings and afternoons?”
“Don’t. Even when you’re physically with us, your mind is somewhere else. Do you really think we can’t tell?”
“I told you. I’m looking for more clues from Proserpina—”
“And you found something. Now I’m going to finally see what it is.”
“I haven’t!” I try, but it’s too late. In my desperation to goad Proserpina, I let myself believe they couldn’t sense my deception, but of course they could. We’ve spent eons together first learning and then memorizing one another’s rhythms; they’ve known something was wrong since that very first morning. When, exactly, were they convinced? When I refused to go to the pool, or some earlier misstep? Were they able to see that my joy at my younger body was tempered by guilt? And still, out of care for me, they gave me space to lie, even as summer withered into autumn.
But now that well of tolerance has run dry.
Pisinoe pushes past me and begins toward Jaquob’s camp. My heart rises in my throat, and instinct takes over. I grab hold of her arm, but this only fuels her suspicion. She hisses and pulls herself from my grasp, hurling her body farther down the path.
“Pisinoe, wait!” I beg, following behind her, reaching for her wings, clawing at her shoulders, trying to trip her, but she barrels forward like an arrow toward its target. Screaming will draw Jaquob to investigate, and that’s the last thing I want.
She stops when she reaches the edge of the clearing. There, in plain sight, Jaquob sits with his back to us on a fallen log in front of his bonfire. Somehow, he hasn’t heard us approach, and the bottle of liquor at his side reveals why. He’s drunk.
All I can do now is watch in rapt silence as a tragedy unfolds across my sister’s features: First, her mouth slackens, and she blinks rapidly, as if Jaquob is no more than a trick of the light, a bad dream she can banish by refocusing her vision. But he’s no waking nightmare, and Pisinoe’s astonishment quickly deteriorates into disgust as she tallies each lie I effortlessly told. The wide O of her lips curls back into a snarl, and her eyes narrow into slits. Her attention is locked on him, but I know her bright blue stare has turned to ice—the warmth that she usually radiates is gone. My throat tightens. Even at her angriest, I can usually dig to find a trove of compassion, hot soil buried beneath a blanket of snow. But now she assumes the posture saved for sailors: Her stance widens, her fingers turn to claws. She bares her teeth and draws back her shoulders, and the breath leaves my lungs.
Pisinoe is going to sing.