7. The Stall and the Lull
The Stall and the Lull
The whispers of war turn to screams and we cannot outrun it.
You lead us along the coast, toward the first city you told the man in the cart—Patras.
It’s on the lips of everyone as we head closer and closer.
The cities we pass through are loud, the inns more expensive, the language trending toward Latin.
The closer to Patras we move, the more soldiers we see.
We did not outrun war.
Patras is unlike anything I’d seen before. Low hills dotted with ochre rooftops surround the harbor. The blue gulf spreads from it, sails as far as the eye can see. Even at night the streets move with drunk soldiers, their voices carrying. Above it all sits the acropolis.
Years—centuries—later, I would return to Patras. Did you know they built a castle over the ruins of the acropolis? It is an ugly thing, like most things built on skeletons.
The patron goddess of Patras doesn’t stop us from entering her city. Like all the other gods on our journey she remains silent, doing nothing to keep us from feasting on her people.
It takes us several hours to find an inn with a vacancy. Our letter from the temple doesn’t go as far here. “Haven’t you heard? Delphi is no more.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Picked apart by the army. Spoils of war,” the innkeeper says, waving his hand. We’re given a room for three times what we’ve paid in the past. I wait for you to convince him otherwise, to bend his will to you. But you take the key and thank him.
The tavern stories mirror those we’ve heard in towns along the way.
A king has decided the Romans don’t belong in Greece, the Romans believe they belong everywhere.
The kings are nowhere to be seen. But the Roman soldiers?
They fill boats and spill into the ports and drink the wine and slaughter the people.
You listen to these stories, your fingers tapping the edges of your mug. We leave the tavern for the inn, wading through streets full of people. I track their heartbeats, I scent their intoxication. I try to find my victim but you grab my wrist and pull me to our room, locking us inside.
“We have few options,” you say, your pacing interrupted by the claustrophobia of the room. You get three steps then must turn, three steps and another turn. On the third turn, your toe catches the edge of the straw pallet and you curse.
“One, we head back the way we came,” you say, holding up a finger.
“But they’re sacking those towns,” I say.
“Which means empty homes to claim, a place more permanent. It also means less food. We’d have to rely on soldiers passing through, though there’s risk in that.
“Two,” you say, back to pacing. “We stay here. We’ve coin enough for a place, though we need to find one in the hills. It will be obvious if we’re never in the sun. Food won’t be scarce, there will always be soldiers.
“Three,” you say, holding up a third finger. “We continue to Rome.”
“How?” I ask.
“A ship. Though it will be risky. We’d be in boxes to prevent being touched by the sun. If we’re overtaken by pirates and they open the boxes during the day…” You trail off and I shudder.
“So two options then,” I say. “How long can a war last?”
You don’t answer at first, your gaze faraway. Then your red eyes land on me, waiting.
“You want me to decide?” I ask. You nod, and my heart soars. My choice, whatever I want. The decision laid at my feet. Whatever I choose, it will never be away from you.
“We stay,” I say. “A home, you say? No more inns?”
“No more inns,” you promise.
And for a time, you keep that promise.
We find a home deep in the outskirts of Patras, where the hills disappear into shadows.
It’s small, with a path that turns to mud when it rains.
The ceiling leaks with the heaviest downpours.
But under the bed is a grave for us to rest, safe from prying eyes should anyone enter during the day and look for us.
For a time, it is all I want.
The soldiers are easy to pick off, and I grow stronger with my control. Soon I can whisper in their mind without opening my mouth, though it takes a lot out of me. We never go hungry, and every morning I crawl into my grave with you pressed against me.
You teach me to read Greek, and together we learn Latin. We join the townspeople during nighttime festivals to gods we’ve robbed.
But war is not pretty. The boats bring with them disease, the soldiers are not kind. They leave the port children with hairless faces and return hollow-eyed and dull. The city seethes as prices soar.
At first, I think these are the worries of a mortal.
This war is but a few years in a life that will stretch to the end of time.
I will blink and they are born and then die, as nameless as the one before them.
I cannot keep track of the amount of soldiers we drain, of the ones we let live.
I do not know the names of our neighbors, I do not care.
That detachment leads to a degree of … tedium.
We rise with the moon and hunt. We return home and I read. We practice Latin. We make love. We crawl into our grave.
We rise with the moon and hunt.
We crawl into our grave.
I try to hunt a local. Your fingers close on my wrist, firm enough to break the bones there. You remind me of the stories from the tavern, of the cities that lay in rubbled ruins from the war. Of the home we secured, of the ever-present food source of soldiers.
“You picked this path,” you remind me, as if I understood what it meant.
The festivals stop.
Another shipment of soldiers march into the horizon, for only half to return. Our food source trickles.
This means plan three is the only plan left. Charter a ship, sail to Brundisium, travel by land to Rome. I’ve seen the maps, I can read them now. My fingers trace the path we’d take, across the sea and up the Roman Empire to its heart.
“How would we charter a boat?” I ask one day.
“You decided to stay here,” you remind me. I annoy you with this line of questioning, but I don’t care.
“We can’t stay here forever,” I lament.
“It’s a few years. It means nothing in the grand span of time,” you tell me. Again.
Tomorrow we will have the same conversation. And the day after and the day after.
“This city is too small,” you say, placing a hand on mine. “I told you—one day I will show you decadence. In Rome you will never be bored.”
Bored. Is that what I am? One word to describe the way I cannot sit still, how I stare over the sea, how I trace the route of where we came to where we are going. Why must it be Rome? Why not back over land, to a different place?
When I listen in the tavern, it’s to the sailors. They still trade on their boats, though they complain about pirates and taxes and the military. I take note of who they are, who returns the most frequently, what their routes are. I commit them to memory and trace the map when I get home.
I hunt alone now. I’ve been deemed successful enough at quieting my prey and trusted enough not to feed from a local. I use this time to plan.
You said we would travel by box. I journey the harbor, watching the boxes that are loaded onto the ships.
Two days if the seas are kind, four if they are not.
Could I sit in a box for four days? I wouldn’t starve—I’ll have a large meal before we leave.
Summer has faded to fall. In a few weeks it will be winter, and during the solstice, the longest night. Less chance to be caught in the sun.
I commission a box. I make it long enough for comfort, sealed tight from the sun. It latches from the inside, with a sliding peephole so I might look out if I desire.
I stare at the box for days. When I return home, I scrub the scent of sawdust from my skin until it bleeds.
The solstice draws nearer.
“You’ve been quiet lately,” you tell me one morning as we crawl into our grave. “And gone often.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my face burning. I cannot look at you without thinking of the box. I cannot speak to you without thinking about what it would be never to hear your voice again.
“You want to leave,” you say. It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact.
“I…” I trail off. I cannot lie to you. I bury my face in my hands and tell you everything. I know a boat. I have a box. If I leave on the solstice, I have the least sunlight. I’ve picked a captain. I have the money.
All my plans, unraveling before you.
And now that I’ve said them, I know I can never go. When I hunt alone, I long for you. When I rise, I reach for you. How stupid I was to think I could sleep without your body against mine.
I thought I wanted freedom. But freedom without you is death.
You don’t interrupt, your sharp gaze assessing. I wait, shaking, for your answer. For the admonishment. For the same conversation we’ve had over and over and over again.
“I promised you decadence,” you say. “Is this not enough? Am I not enough?”
“No!” And then, in horror at how that sounded, “No! You are enough, you are my everything. I can’t stay.
I feel as though this war will never end!
I cannot sit in the same tavern every night, walk the same path every time I hunt.
I hate the soldiers, I hate their haunted faces when they return. It isn’t you.”
“You’re right—it’s not me,” you say. I’ve said something wrong, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. “You would leave without me?”
“I won’t,” I promise. “It was a passing thought.”
“You bought a box. You picked a boat and a captain,” you say. “You bought one box.”
“I’m sorry,” I cry, because I really am. I am selfish and stupid and so, so unkind. All you’ve done is love me, and I’ve let boredom tear us apart.
“No, Melinoe, I am sorry,” you say. You cup my chin, tilting me to look at you. I can’t make sense of what I see in your face, can’t understand the look you’re giving me.
“Is there enough time to build a second box?” you ask softly.
“What?”
“A second box. One for me,” you clarify.
“I can have him build one big enough for the both of us…”
“No. It will be too heavy. Better to be separate, though it will pain me to be from you so long,” you say. I close my eyes and tip my forehead to yours. You hold me close, dragging us into the grave. My eyelids grow heavy as the sun starts to crest the horizon.
“Tonight, we will plan. I’ll make sure we’re safe,” you whisper. “No matter what happens.” And then sleep pulls me under.