Chapter 26
An Unexpected Gift
Danae stretched her limbs, then reached out and brushed the mosquito curtain aside.
Sofia was waiting to greet her with breakfast. She had the strange feeling she’d woken like this many times before, and there was something important she should be doing, but when she tried to remember, the thoughts slipped through her memory like sand.
She rubbed her face, unable to clear the mist from her mind.
“I think... I need to go...”
Sofia held out an omelet stuffed with lotus petals.
“You can’t go anywhere on an empty stomach.”
It smelled delicious, and suddenly Danae realized that she was starving. She bolted down the omelet, and as she ate the tension in her shoulders eased. She was being foolish, there was nothing to worry about it.
“Your task is fishing,” prompted Sofia as she began massaging coconut salve into Danae’s skin.
“Yes.” A smile drifted across her face. She was good at fishing.
Sofia nodded and handed Danae her bag.
“Have you got your knife?”
Danae stepped onto the platform and reached for a vine. “Of course,” she said as she wound one around her thigh, then stepped over the edge.
She moved along the familiar path, hidden to those who did not know the ways of the jungle.
The luminous moss held the memory of each footstep she’d imprinted the day before and the day before that.
How many times had she walked this way? She couldn’t remember.
But that didn’t matter, it wasn’t important.
In no time at all she stepped out into the clearing. She waved to Telamon and Peleus as they passed, carrying a couple of wooden crates. They must be on their way to harvest the mango trees in the southern part of the jungle. That was their task.
She headed straight to a low, square structure on the opposite side of the Hunters Hall to Polyxo’s hut.
Brushing aside the animal pelts hanging across the doorway, she stepped into the armory.
Walking past the rows of wall-mounted bows, swords and axes, she reached up and grabbed a simple wooden spear and a wicker basket.
Armed with the tools for her task, she turned to leave, but something caught her eye.
A forgotten thing, small and white, lying on the floor in the corner of the armory.
A dart pipe.
The faintest crease appeared between her brows as she stooped to retrieve it.
There were carvings whittled into the bone, prayers to Artemis to bless the speed and accuracy of the darts.
One of the hunters must have dropped it.
They were the only ones permitted to carry them.
She should give it to Hypsipyle, that was the right thing to do.
But even as the thought percolated in her mind, her hand slipped the pipe into her bag. She would return it later. No need to delay her task.
The water sang to Danae through the network of trees, drawing her along a path she sensed rather than saw. She had the feeling she hadn’t always been useful. But now she was. She listened and moved with the jungle. It was satisfying to be part of something larger than herself.
She emerged onto the bank of a wide river that wove a torrent of blue through the trees. She tucked the basket under her arm and, spear in hand, leaped onto a large boulder that split the current in two.
Her feet planted solidly on the familiar rock, she set down the basket and loosely cradled the spear in her fingers.
A man’s face floated into her memory, kind and sun-worn.
The man who’d taught her to fish. A dull ache spread across her chest at the thought of her father.
Then, as quickly as it had come, the pain faded, and his likeness melted like morning dew.
Nothing that came before mattered now; all she had was this moment.
She waited for her breathing to slow, until all she could hear was the pulse of the river. Then she gazed down into its depths, waiting for the flicker of a fin.
There.
The spear pierced the current, straight and true. It sliced through the water and stuck fast into the riverbed. She peered down and her heart skipped as she saw a large silver fish pinned below the surface.
She squatted to keep her balance and tugged the weapon free, the fish still impaled, and pulled it clear of the water.
Then she yanked the fish from the spear and held on tight as it twisted in her hands.
It was at least three times the size of a red tunny.
Polyxo and Hypsipyle would be pleased. She dropped the still twitching fish into her basket and wiped her brow.
She delved into her bag, searching for her knife to bring the fish’s life to a quick end. But instead, her hand brushed something hard and cloth-wrapped. As she drew it out, her palm began to tingle.
The prophecy stone. She had not thought about it in so long.
Heat pulsed through her hand and through the stupor fogging her mind she heard the voice, so faint it seemed to be calling from the other end of the world.
You are the last daughter! You are the last daughter!
As she gripped the stone the voice grew louder, and memory, nauseating and overwhelming, crashed over her. She staggered, knees jarring as she hit the rock.
She stared at the cloth-covered stone, then at the fish still jerking limply in the basket. What was she doing? She had to gather the Argonauts and get back to the ship.
“Daeira?”
She shoved the prophecy stone back into her bag and spun around.
Hylas was standing on the bank, a netted sack stuffed with coconuts slung over his shoulder.
He’d grown a scraggly beard. When had that happened?
Her hands flew to her own hair and discovered that her crop had grown over her ears and halfway down her neck.
Despite the warmth of the island, the cold arms of fear wrapped around her.
They must have been on Lemnos for months.
“What are you doing?” Hylas cocked his head.
There was something wrong with his face. Something other than his new facial hair. His pupils were huge, consuming his irises with gluttonous darkness.
“You’re not doing your task.”
Her mouth was dry, the back of her neck clammy with sweat.
“Yes I am, look.” She tilted the basket toward him, revealing the fish. Hylas stared at it and blinked. It was horrible to watch him, as if a stranger had stolen his skin.
“What did you just put in your bag?”
He walked to the edge of the bank, as though he was going to jump and join her on the boulder. Danae scrambled back, lost her balance, and crashed into the water.
The shock of the fall robbed the breath from her lungs.
She broke the surface, gasping for air, while the river carried her downstream.
She struck out to swim to the bank, but the river twisted, flowing into a much larger, faster-flowing channel of water.
Hylas was shouting from the bank, but his voice was soon drowned out by the roaring current.
It took all of her strength to keep her head above water as it tore at her limbs.
The river was shockingly cold and blasted away the last of the haze clouding her mind.
She had been drugged. Polyxo, Hypsipyle, Sofia had all lied. They had no intention of letting the Argonauts leave the island.
Bruised and battered, she tumbled through the water, trying but failing to grasp hold of anything that would halt her progress.
Suddenly, the end of the river came rushing toward her.
No, not the end. A waterfall.
She barely had time to brace herself before she was falling, the weight of the water crashing behind her.
Sunlight prized her eyelids apart.
Wincing, Danae eased herself onto her elbows.
From the pain lancing across her ribs, it felt like she’d broken them all.
Drawing shallow breaths through the ache, she took stock of her surroundings.
She was lying, half submerged, on the bank of a lagoon.
Despite the torrent that hurtled down the mossy rock face from the river above, the water was calm.
It lapped gently at her torso as if it had been disturbed by nothing more than a tumbling stone.
Then she noticed the cloud of red blossoming into the blue around her.
Clenching her teeth, she heaved herself further up the bank, her sodden bag that she miraculously still had dragging alongside her.
Nausea lurched up her throat as she looked down at her legs. A shard of her left thigh bone had broken through the skin, her blood pumping thick and fast into the water. Tentatively, she prodded the flesh near the crest of bone. She felt nothing. That was bad, very bad.
When they were children, Santos had broken his arm diving from the cliffs on their beach.
She’d only been seven, but she remembered the waxy pallor of her brother’s face as her father pulled him from the water.
She’d thought him so brave for not crying.
But later, back at their hut, his screams echoed to the sun and back when their mother reset the bone.
The shock of the fall delayed the pain, but when it finally came it was all-encompassing.
She tried to move her leg and found she could not. Hauling herself onto the bank had been taxing enough, there was no way she’d be able to get back up the waterfall.
Hylas would have gone for help. He wouldn’t abandon her. But his mind was lost to the effects of whatever the islanders were drugging them with. She couldn’t count on him. He might not even remember what had happened.
She had to do something quickly or she was going to bleed to death.
Her trembling fingers slipped over the wet buckle of her bag as she searched for her knife.
Blade in hand, she cut a long strip of leather from the hem of her tunic.
Gasping at the pain in her ribs, she reached down and tied it as tightly as she could above her broken thigh bone.
The stream of blood slowed to a trickle. That at least might buy her some time.