Chapter 9
The Heart of a Tree
Danae woke in agony. It felt as though her body had been crushed under a quarry of rocks.
She was in the yard, and the midday sun loomed high above the hut. She tried to move her arms and couldn’t. It took her a moment to realize that they were tied around a post in the goat pen. There was a smell in the air that did not belong. Something sweet she recognized but could not place.
She had no idea how she’d got there. She could recall flashes of a strange dream, a tree with golden fruit. Her mouth tasted bitter. She had the distinct feeling she was forgetting something. She could feel the imprint of it in her bones. Why could she not remember?
She cast around and saw a bowl of water beside her. She lunged for it, suddenly gripped by a raging thirst. She cursed as she bashed the bowl with her forehead and water slopped onto the ground.
“Ma,” she rasped. But her mother did not come. “Ma?”
Still no answer.
She leaned over and dragged the bowl toward her with her teeth. Then she dunked her face into it, lapping like a dog. Her skull felt like a trampled egg. Why in Tartarus was she tied up?
Water dripping down her chin, she shouted, “Ma!”
This time, the hut door creaked open. Her mother lingered in the doorway, one hand on the frame, the other clutching the handle of a carving knife.
“Ma?”
Her mother took a step into the yard. The sweet smell intensified. Eleni wouldn’t meet Danae’s gaze. As she approached, she touched her forehead, tracing the all-seeing eye of the Twelve onto her skin. The knife trembled in her other hand.
“You’re scaring me.”
Her mother took a deep breath and lifted her gaze.
The look in her eyes chilled Danae to her core. Eleni was terrified. She was looking at Danae as though she wasn’t her daughter, but something monstrous.
“Don’t move.” Her mother’s hand tightened on the handle of the blade.
“I don’t understand...” Danae tugged at her bindings.
Tears tumbled down Eleni’s cheeks, and she turned away as though it caused her physical pain to look at her daughter.
Danae scoured the yard, and her eyes fell on the table, visible through the hut door. She suddenly realized what the smell was. Embalming oils.
A pair of mottled feet lay on the wood, protruding from a white winding cloth.
With earth-shattering clarity, everything came back to her.
“Alea,” she whimpered.
“Don’t say her name, kakodaimon,” her mother hissed.
Danae tore her gaze from her sister’s body. “What?”
“I don’t know what I did to deserve this.” Eleni’s mouth stretched into a soundless howl, snot-muddled tears dripping from her chin.
Danae’s pain-addled mind tried to fit the pieces together. It was as though she’d somehow stepped into a nightmare world that looked just like her own. Perhaps she’d died and gone to Tartarus, and this was her own personal torment.
“Ma...it’s me.” She could barely get the words out.
“I saw what you did to her.” Eleni’s eyes were wild, her voice strangled with grief. “I found her heart in your hands.”
Danae stared at her mother, her head pounding with every word.
“I didn’t... I would never hurt Alea. Ma, please—”
“No!” Eleni raised the knife between them as Danae struggled against the rope. “You will not use your evil magic on me.”
“Evil magic? Ma, I’m Danae. I’m your daughter... I didn’t kill her!”
The knife shook in her mother’s hand. “You may have taken her skin, but you are not my Danae.” She twisted her face away. “I can’t look at you...you’re so like her.” She drew a deep breath. “They will be here soon, then it will all be over.” Then she turned and ran back into the hut.
“What do you mean? Who’s coming? Ma!”
Her mother shut the door.
“Don’t leave me!”
Danae screamed herself raw, but her mother didn’t come out again.
Maybe she was possessed. Her thoughts kept returning to the tree, the deep pull she’d felt, the warmth bleeding out from her hands across Alea’s skin and those strange threads of light.
The sight of her sister’s body had unleashed a tide of memory.
In her trancelike state, the twisted branches and golden apples had seemed so real; the sand, sea and Alea were like a dream.
It was impossible, a tree could not sprout from a dead human heart and grow to maturity in a matter of moments. Only the gods had that kind of power. She searched every corner of her mind, but the last thing she could remember was taking a bite out of one of the golden apples. Then nothing.
A sob lodged in the back of her throat. This was all wrong. She should be inside helping her mother prepare her sister’s body for the burial rights. Alea would be on her way to the Asphodel Meadows now. Death had finally done what Danae could not and taken away her sister’s pain.
She stiffened. There was movement in the distance. Someone was coming up the path. Fear came flooding back. Squirming, she tried desperately to prize her hands free.
As the figure drew closer, she stopped struggling.
With the habit of one who’d spent a lifetime rising early and creeping out of the hut, her father silently eased open the yard gate.
Danae opened her mouth, but he raised a finger to his lips.
Swiftly, he ran to her, and with fisherman-nimble hands, undid her bindings. His sweat reeked of stale wine, and his eyes were sunken and bloodshot, but he looked at her like he always did, like she was his little Danie.
Her legs were stiff from sitting, and he had to help her to her feet. She caught sight of her hands and faltered. They were crusted with dried blood.
“It’s all right,” he whispered and took her stained fingers in his calloused ones.
As they crossed the yard, she stared at the hut door, convinced at any moment it would burst open and her mother would fly at her with the knife. But they ran through the gate without discovery.
“Pa,” she gasped as they sprinted down the pebble-strewn path. “I didn’t do it.”
“I know.”
She faltered when they reached the sand. The beach stretched out before them, turquoise waves lapping at the shore. The only place she’d ever felt truly at home, the place that had taken the one she loved the most.
The tree wasn’t there.
“Come on.” Her father tugged her arm. “We need to get to the boat.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain when we’re at sea.”
Dragging her eyes from the spot where she’d found Alea’s body, she let him pull her across the beach to the little cove where Odell kept his fishing vessel, clinging tightly to his large, warm hands.
They waded into the water, and her father untied the mooring rope while she clambered aboard.
It was a small tub, just a pair of oars and one sail, and it always stank of fish, even when it was empty.
She stared at the stained planks, shimmering with loose scales.
Her father wound the rope around his arm and heaved himself into the boat, easing down between the oars with a grunt.
“Pa, what’s happening?”
Hurriedly, her father began to row. “Your mother called the temple hands.”
Danae’s stomach dropped through the bottom of the boat. If the temple hands believed she was possessed by an evil spirit, they would kill her.
“I won’t let them take you, Danie. I’m not losing another daughter.”
At the sound of her childhood name, she began to cry. Amidst all the chaos, her father and his boat were a lifeline to everything that had been ripped away.
Once they were hidden behind the crag of the next bay, he heaved in the oars. Then he put his arms around her and wiped her tearstained cheeks.
She felt sick. She couldn’t banish the image of Alea’s ribs peeling away from her body.
She extracted herself from her father’s arms. “I think the gods have cursed me.” Terrified as she was of him looking at her the way her mother had, she told him everything that had happened, from finding Alea’s body in the sea to the strange golden apple tree.
Odell looked at her long and hard. “Oh, Danie, I’m sorry. I don’t understand this any more than you do. Sometimes, I think the fates just roll a die.”
She looked up at the yellow-legged gulls soaring above, cawing to each other as they searched for nesting spots on the cliffs.
“I’ve got to leave Naxos, haven’t I?”
Her father nodded, an ocean of sadness in his eyes. “It’s the only way you’ll be safe. The temple hands will hunt you to the ends of the island.”
She knew he was right. It didn’t make it any easier.
Her father delved into the pocket of his tunic and brought out the owl brooch Philemon had given Alea. He pressed it into her hands. She traced the little green gems with her fingers. It felt like a lifetime had passed since she’d first seen it pinned to her sister’s breast.
“Go to the oracle at Delphi. This will pay your entrance. The oracle knows everything. Whatever’s happening to you, if you are cursed, the Pythia will tell you how to fix it. Then you can come home.”
Delphi. The mainland. She’d never even been to Athens, let alone the land beyond.
“I’ve never been anywhere but Naxos...how will I find my way?”
Her father took her by the shoulders. “Take this boat and sail northwest past the islands until you reach the mainland shore. Then follow the coast west for two days until you reach Mount Parnassus. There you’ll find Delphi.”
“But if I take your boat, how will you fish?”
Odell’s eyes were heavy. “I’ll find a way.”
“You and Santos rely on it—I can’t take it, you’ll all starve!”
“You have to,” his voice wavered. “You have to get off the island.”
Danae chewed her lip. “What if I took another ship?”
Odell’s lined brow furrowed.
“Merchants sail from Naxos to Athens every day. I could stow away on one of their vessels.” She reached for her father’s hand. “I can do it.”
He broke down then and held her, their tears muddling with the scales at the bottom of the boat.
An hour later, the mouth of Naxos Port yawned before them, ships of all shapes and sizes protruding from the jetty like jagged teeth.
“Get down,” her father whispered as they approached.
Danae curled herself into the bottom of the boat. It wasn’t long before she felt the gentle jolt of their vessel knocking against the jetty. Odell gathered up the tether and attached it to a wooden mooring pillar.
The air hummed with the steady chatter and clatter of merchants and their wares, punctuated by the wet crack of octopuses hitting stone as fishermen slapped their catches onto the rocks to dry.
She breathed in the scent she knew so well.
Fish, sweat, spice and oiled wood. She wanted to remember every note.
She had no idea when she would smell them again.
Her father made a show of bending down to check the rope. “See the ship directly behind me?” he whispered.
She peered discreetly over the lip of the boat and saw a small merchant vessel half full of wheels of cheese.
“I know that man—he trades in Athens. You could hide in between those cheeses.”
She stole another peak over his shoulder. The merchant was standing next to his ship, drumming his fingers irritably on the prow. He was portly with a lavish beard, overseeing a boy, Danae presumed to be his son, unloading more cheeses from a mule-led cart.
“How am I going to get aboard without them seeing?”
“I have an idea, trust me.” He squeezed her hand. “And remember, Danie, all seas are the same beast. When we’re riding her, no matter how far apart, we’re riding together.”
He opened his palm to reveal a pebble. “Are you ready?”
She nodded. He threw the stone.
It whistled through the air and caught the mule square on the behind. The creature reared then bolted down the jetty, cart in tow, scattering traders in its wake.
“My cheese!” bellowed the merchant.
His son tore off after the mule, and while the merchant’s back was turned, Odell hissed, “Go!”
A piece of her soul was wrenched away as she leaped from her father’s boat.
She sprinted across the jetty, vaulted the prow of the merchant ship, and landed in a sprawl amongst the cheeses.
Hastily, she folded her limbs between the stacked wheels and nudged the wax tarpaulin over herself.
Clamping a hand over her mouth, she fought the urge to retch as the sour stench of cheese clogged her throat.
Eventually, a dejected clip-clop signaled the mule’s return.
“Bloody useless animal,” she heard the merchant say. “Get on with it.”
The ship rocked as the boy continued to load the rest of the stock. With each sway she tensed, waiting for the tarpaulin to be pulled back and her position revealed, but the moment did not come. Then the vessel dipped as the merchant and his son climbed aboard.
“Just a moment.” A different voice. “May the Twelve see you and know you.”
There was a pause as the merchant presumably returned the sacred gesture.
“What is it? I’m due in Athens in three hours.”
“We won’t keep you long. Do you have a license for these...”
“Cheeses,” finished the merchant curtly. “Yes, of course.”
“Is that all you’re carrying?”
There was a rustle of parchment, then the edge of the tarpaulin twitched. Danae’s heart thumped so loudly she was sure they would hear it. There was nowhere to run. If they searched the boat, it would be over.
A crack of sky appeared, light pouring over the mottled cheese rinds as the cover was drawn back. Danae’s entire body tightened as she readied herself to fight her way out.
Then someone shouted from across the jetty, “Telchis, look at this!”
The cover stopped moving just before her leg was revealed. The man stepped away, muttering to the merchant, “Everything seems to be in order.”
Relief coursed through her at the sound of footsteps walking away down the jetty and the hiss of the tarpaulin being pulled back over the cheeses. She squirmed a hand between her legs, found the owl brooch she’d pinned to the inside of her tunic and traced the rivets in the bronze.
Whatever was happening to her, the oracle would have the answer.