CHAPTER ELEVEN
CONVERSATIONS CEASE WHEN I EMERGE from Dionysus’s tent – an abrupt halt in what was clearly a celebratory evening. His followers lie scattered in small circles and I’m not sure where to step, when one girl jumps to her feet and runs over to me.
She’s so angular her chiton practically hangs off her, the pink bright against her cool brown skin.
Her dark hair is cropped close, her ears studded with a dozen silver hoops, and her belt is threaded with tools that seem to somehow include both a chisel and a stylus, like any sort of emergency might call.
‘Areatha, I’m Myrto. Come this way, please.’ She is walking away before I can reply and, hastily, I scurry after her. ‘So I’ve arranged those linens you brought over here.’
She waves to one of the large tent structures, the pale-yellow sheets Dionysus told me to bring tacked on to the end. She draws open the entrance and ushers me through.
‘Let me know if it gets too loud – people tend to whisper through the night here. Though we do request that other late-night activity be taken to the appropriate tents. There are private sections if there are only two of you and larger tents if you’re with a group; I can take you over if –’
‘No! Thank you!’
You have sex with a man out of wedlock once and the Fates decide to throw an orgy-crazed cult in your path.
‘Of course, we should get you sorted first,’ Myrto says. ‘So I’ve put you over here.’
She draws a curtain aside. Inside, sheets are piled high, flower garlands are draped to form a canopy above and a stack of folded chitons lies to the side, with a few clay jars perched atop it.
There’s also a block of soap, which I’m both relieved and concerned by – hoping I don’t smell so awful from such a distance that they’d rushed to find it.
‘You did all this?’ I ask.
‘Do you like it? There was plenty of time for crafting on our way here and I thought these flower chains were so pretty. We don’t have much to do on the boat given Dionysus can just ask dolphins to pull the ship along.’
What? But I’m beginning to suspect Dionysus does so many outrageous and baffling things solely to prompt such questions and I refuse to give him the satisfaction. I reach for the flowers, brushing a dried petal. ‘They’re gorgeous.’
I can’t believe someone made these. And just … gave them to me.
Oh, this does not bode well for those walls I was planning on keeping up.
‘I’m so glad you like them! I also fetched these,’ she says, plucking up one of those jars.
‘I’ll show you where we keep them but for now here is some healing salve for your shoulder, this is a moisturizing cream, the soap is olive oil and rose but there are other scents too if you prefer, and there’s a beeswax balm for dry lips and – Why are you staring at me like that? ’
I wasn’t aware I had been. ‘This is just … so much.’
‘We look after people here,’ she says firmly. And my heart pounds – because Theseus promised that. A future with people who care – and now it’s not a promise at all but the reality before me.
Myrto scowls. ‘Did Dionysus not explain that?’
‘Um, no, he was busy giving me a big sexual liberation speech.’
Myrto rolls her eyes. ‘Of course he was. Please rest assured that’s not why everyone joins.’
‘Why else do people join a sex cult?’
‘It’s not a sex cult!’ Myrto gapes, then shakes her head quickly.
‘Gods above, no wonder we’re not making numbers when this is the pitch Dionysus is giving.
It’s not even a cult – that’s just what Hera began calling it to imply worship of Dionysus was outside the core pantheon.
We’re just … people who had nowhere else to go.
Those who society would rather pretend don’t exist. People who think differently or love differently or have made different choices in life.
That’s what we’re about: choice. Interrogating why we’re taught certain things are … wrong.’
Wrong has never come into my imaginings – it was just against the rules. And rules were dictated by my father – an extension of his control and order. A robbing of choice …
Olympus above, please tell me I don’t agree with these people.
‘It’s alright,’ Myrto says softly.
But it’s not alright because my eyes are stinging and even if I never thought them wrong, hearing that the things I’ve done that would make me a pariah in Crete are perfectly fine here is making it rather difficult to breathe.
‘So, what is it you do?’ I ask in a desperate and rather obvious attempt to remove the focus from my slowly welling tears. ‘Just travel round picking up strays?’
‘You really haven’t heard any of the stories?’
At my shaking head, she sighs. ‘It’s probably for the best. This is how it normally goes: we dock at the sort of town where women are confined to their homes, or where they face public humiliation if they’re accused of infidelity, or where they’re just not treated like people.
But Dionysus is a god so he insists they join us and, for a night, we sing and dance and they have fun.
Then the next day maybe they say no to their husbands or they want to see their friends again or they ask why they can only eat when every man in their household has first had his fill.
And the men push back, accuse us barbarians of corrupting their communities, and sometimes the women go on strike or come to join us and eventually the leaders relent.
And by the time we leave, things are changed, and it’s not perfect but it’s a little more equal because for the first time the women are allowed to think about what they want, and to believe it matters. ’
All that from a few parties? And like she knows what I’m thinking, she laughs.
‘Fun matters, Areatha. It reminds you your life is to be lived, and perhaps not only in the service of other people.’
Joy bled as quickly as bodies in the palace of Knossos. If Dionysus had focused on all this, I might have been more interested in what he had to say. Instead he thought he could – what, seduce me into it?
‘But then, of course,’ she continues, ‘the stories spread, and the men in charge say we’re brainwashing women, cursing them, charming them up mountains and filling their minds with depravity.
Then the next time we come to a town, we’re met with outrage and weapons drawn.
Dionysus’s godhood is the only protection we have and he knows that, so he tends to be the one to take the fall or put himself in harm’s way so it’s always him they blame.
And … well, it’s been an exhausting few months.
So we’re going to take some time on Naxos and its surrounding islands to have some fun of our own.
They know Dionysus here, so there’s less risk of violence and hopefully we can all recharge a little, him especially – gods need worship and so many mortals turning against him is draining him. ’
‘Isn’t partying with mortals quite involved for a god? Don’t they just perch on the clouds of Olympus unless they fancy meddling in some human’s life?’
Myrto presses her lips together. ‘He’s not …
exactly the biggest fan of the other gods.
His father’s wife, Hera, is responsible for the death of Dionysus’s mother.
And she’s tried to kill him plenty of times too.
He needs to grow his following if he’s to become powerful enough to stand any chance of surviving her.
Maybe the easiest way would be to do what the others do – stand apart and strike fear into mortal hearts until they fall down in worship – but that’s not really his style so …
here we are. Inventing wine has given him a decent foundation.
’ I think back to that grape tiara and blanche.
That was him? ‘Lowering your inhibitions, enough to look past what you’ve been taught and give in to what you desire.
To ask why it’s all so wrong in the first place. ’
‘Fine,’ I say, unsure why I keep needing to argue this but apparently I do. ‘But it’s not like before he came along everyone just did as they were supposed to. And if his spiel is anything to go by, the man acts like he invented sex.’
Myrto gives an amused snort and eventually just shrugs. ‘Alright, I’ll grant you that one’s just a character flaw.’