Chapter 19 Before
19
Before
My wings are heavy, too heavy, and their weight drags me down into my sticky, dark vomit. But even pressed against the cool floor of the cave, every part of me burns as if it were my body placed upon the pyre. Pisinoe strokes my back, but her hand recoils in terror. Black feathers stick to her fingers—my feathers. I wail. Each twist of my body tears more away.
Darkness gathers in the corners of my vision. I try to blink it back, but it descends with the same intensity as the pain, narrowing my world to only agony and shadow. “Raidne? Pisinoe?”
“We’re here, Thelxiope!” Pisinoe’s voice is strained. I hear the horror of this scene inside it, and it brings more vomit up my throat. We were never beautiful creatures, some terrible combination of woman and raptor, but there was a dignity in our ferocious appearance. That’s gone now.
The muscles in my legs and my wings constrict so tightly that they’re sure to snap, but the sensation doesn’t relent. It’s as if they’re retracting inside of me, called back to my core by some unseen force.
It’s too much. Were Raidne and Pisinoe right to question my connection with Proserpina? Was her voice no more than the manifestation of a guilty conscience, and now I’m suffering Ceres’s wrath for keeping Jaquob as long as I did? For dedicating him to someone else?
Or worse—is this punishment from Proserpina herself, overdue vengeance for the part I played in her abduction?
All I know for certain is that I’m dying.
Raidne’s hand cups my face. I picture her assuring me that I’m fine, but I see nothing in the blackness and hear nothing over the sound of my screams.
“What’s happening to me?” I reach to touch my featherless wings. The limbs, once the span of two men, are now as small as a hawk’s. They’re shrinking, swallowed away between my scapulae.
The shadows abate long enough for me to see scales fall from my talons. Beneath them, there’s skin. Human skin. As my claws recede, understanding emerges from the blinding pain.
The monster I was is gone.
“Raidne…” Pisinoe gasps. “She’s…”
Raidne’s palms shift to slide me into her lap. I tremble as her hands trace down my spine, unencumbered by the large appendages that once rested there. Sweat plasters the fallen feathers to my skin, and I struggle to breathe. But the cutting pain begins to lessen, and the tears that now grace my cheeks are from relief. Raidne gently wipes the sweat from my brow.
“She’s human,” Raidne finishes, but I can’t tell if the words are real or if I’ve imagined them, because the world once again dissolves into darkness.
My sisters carry me from the cave, an arm slung over each oftheir shoulders, my body hanging limp between them. It doesn’t take long to reach the cabin. They’re used to carrying the weight of men; my frail frame poses no challenge.
Once we’re inside, Raidne lays me down gently on my pallet and Pisinoe warms a pot of water over the fire. When it’s ready, she cleans the mixture of tears, sweat, vomit, and feathers from my skin.
The room is foggy, as if I’m looking through a lens of milky glass. Every part of me aches, and I toss and turn, unable to find a position on the straw-stuffed mattress that doesn’t irritate my raw skin. It’s still flushed, hot to the touch, and fresh beads of sweat stream from my pores faster than Pisinoe can wipe them away.
Fragments of my sisters’ hushed whispers float down overme.
“What does this mean…?”
“How did this happen…?”
“Will she survive…?”
Finally, thankfully, I slip into unconsciousness.
But it’s not a quiet darkness that I find myself in. Scattered visions appear: a small town, the shadow of a man. I see Jaquob at the edge of a vast and dark subterranean river waiting for the ferryman; I see Proserpina.
She was still a child the last time I laid eyes on her, merely sixteen years old. Now she’s a woman, a beautiful one, with long, dark tendrils of hair that billow around her face like a lion’s mane. Her lips are painted a deep red, almost magenta. The color of pomegranates. How often I’ve pictured her popping those tiny berries, so dark that they’re nearly purple, between her teeth, savoring the sweet juice that trickled over her lips. How did their nectar taste? Did Dis kiss it from her mouth?
She stands at the edge of our secluded pool wearing a shimmering black gown. What I first believe to be silver thread is actually the soft twinkling of stars. Constellations ripple across the fabric. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen stands before me cloaked in the heavens.
I want so desperately to speak to her, but when I try to talk, all I can muster is empty hot air.
“Thelia.” She breaks the silence with the name I haven’t heard in millennia, her voice as sweet as honey. When she opens her arms to me, it’s all the invitation I need. I collapse into her embrace. She nuzzles her head against mine, and though I’m sure this is a dream, I can still smell her. It’s no longer the scent of morning dew and lilies like I remember, but something darker—it’s ceremonial incense, ash, and flame. It’s sweet, dead earth. The smell doesn’t match the memory of the girl I once knew, and when she releases me, I don’t see a child.
I see a goddess.
“We don’t have much time. My mother grew bored with torturing you and placed Scopuli outside of any ship’s path. I don’t think she expected you to live this long, but before she did that, I was always able to help.”
“So it really was you.” My heart flutters with the confirmation that I was right. “You sent the ships.”
A sad smile settles over her lips. “Of course I did. Without men to hear your song…”
“…we’d fade into dust.”
“I thought I was going to be powerless to stop that from happening, but when that last ship wandered astray, I convinced Tempestas to knock it farther off course.”
“The goddess of storms?” I remember how quickly that squall appeared, its wall of stygian black clouds gathering on the horizon. How had Jaquob described it?
It was like Hell opened above us and let loose its fury.
“I need you to listen carefully, Thelia. I’m a powerful ally, but my mother is an equally powerful enemy. Tempestas was leery to help this time—she won’t do it again.”
“What do I need to do?”
“You’re not trapped here in your current form. No more ships will pass, so you must leave Scopuli and convince moremen to return with you. I can save you all, but I need more blood. Their sacrifices will return you all to your divine forms; they will free you from this place. But without them this new body will only last six turns of the moon. You must hurry.”
Six full, round moons—one for each pomegranate seed.
“Why send me?” I choke; it’s all I can muster.
“Because you listened for me,” she whispers, cupping my face in her hands. “And you shouldn’t have been punished for a destiny that was already decided.”
“That’s not why I’m being punished.”
The Fates might have tied Proserpina to Dis, but they didn’t deliver her to him. I did that alone.
“Then because I know you can succeed.”
The words make my body tremble; they are seismic. I don’t deserve her compassion, and if she truly knew what transpired that day at the pool, she wouldn’t give it so freely. I retreat from her, ashamed.
“You shouldn’t,” I say, weeping. “I’ve failed you before. What if I fail you again?”
“Thelia…” she begins, but I’m distracted by a hole that appears in my chest. Inside the gaping aperture, there’s only darkness—and it grows, swallowing my body into that inky black. Instead of feeling frightened, I’m flooded with relief. This shadow will devour me whole, and I won’t have to face the woman whom I betrayed, won’t have to watch her features crumble with disappointment when she realizes the mistake she’s made trusting me with this task.
“You won’t.”
Her words are claws to my heart, and she repeats them over and over until even her voice fades into shadow.
The rest of my sleep is as cold and dreamless as a tomb.
I wake to my sisters’ relieved faces. Pisinoe tells me with a trembling voice that I slept for three days, twisting with fever the entire time. My temperature broke only shortly before I rose, and even Raidne looks shaken as she brings water to my lips.
I tell them about my dream, about Proserpina’s plan to save us from Scopuli. Pisinoe is elated at the news, and Raidne is as well, though her jubilation is more subdued. At one point, I think I catch her wiping tears from her eyes, but I can’t be certain that it’s not my recently fevered mind playing tricks on me.
“It’s settled, then,” Raidne says, always the one to make the final decision. “You must go.”
On the day I’m set to depart, I make my way to the meadow where wildflowers enchanted me all summer. The first frost has already come and gone, so I don’t expect to find any blooms waiting for me. But Proserpina has sent one last message.
The pasture is overflowing with lilies. Their orange crowns stretch proudly toward the sun despite the ice that coats their stems. I kneel before one of the regal blossoms, its delicate petals gilded in hoarfrost. The sunlight bounces off each gracile stalk, each thin leaf, each vibrant petal, radiating thousands of beams of light across the field, thousands of diamonds shimmering for me, wishing me luck, saying goodbye.
The crunch of ice beneath talons signals I’m not alone. Raidne appears from the woods, wringing her hands with nerves. But when she sees the lilies, awe overtakes her. We stand in silence for a few moments and bask in the sight.
“Everything’s ready,” she offers slowly. She doesn’t know how to tell me it’s time to leave, doesn’t know how to send me away.
I look down at my hands, suddenly petrified. This rocky island is our prison, but it’s also our home. A part of me is afraid to leave it behind. Raidne slides in close and places a thin golden circlet on my head. She beams at the result and nestles her face into my shoulder.
“Whatever happens, this is for the best, Thelxiope. I know you have no choice but to go, but this gives Pisinoe and me something to hope for. I never thought we’d have that again.”
I reach for her hand and squeeze it gently. “Walk me to the beach?”
She nods.
I feel like I’m watching from above as we stroll side by side, arms linked, down the path that leads to the skiff that will carry me away: two women—one human, one myth—moving toward something greater than themselves.
Pisinoe waits for us on the same stretch of sand that brought me Jaquob. She’s filled the tiny boat with necklaces, jewels, gold and silver coins, weaponry, anything that can conceivably count as wealth. It’s an impressive hoard. Perhaps I’ll find my way into legend again, this time as someone who redeems herself, not only as a monster who tears men apart. Then Raidne hands me the letter we spent hours crafting together, my new history inked across its surface. I press it to my chest, reveling in the fact that these past centuries won’t be my only story. This single piece of paper is proof of that.
Their eyes well with tears as they help me climb into Jaquob’s vessel and push me into the surf. I’ll head south out of the archipelago, and then it’s up to the Fates where I land.
The water today is calm, and I raise the sail. Wind rushes to fill it, and then I’m off, coasting on the surface of the waves. I turn back to look at the shore.
Raidne and Pisinoe have ascended into the sky to follow me until the curse forbids them from going any farther. Like this, they’re magnificent—with their wings spread wide, with the wind blowing through their hair. But it’s what happens next that steals my breath.
A song floats down from the heavens. Their voices are so beautiful that tears blur their forms, and only now do I understand the overwhelming desire to follow its notes wherever they may lead me. It contains everything that Raidne and Pisinoe feel right now: There’s the sadness at losing me and the jealousy of being left behind. But more important are the notes that overpower those: the hope for a new beginning, joy at the end of the monotony, and, more than anything else, love.
Our song spins promises of the future, and for the first time that I can remember, I have no idea what mine holds. But with the sea unfurling before me, their voices sing the answer, as clear as Scopuli’s waters.
In them, I hear salvation.