CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WE HAVE NO IDEA HOW long we have until Theseus reaches my parents and barters for Phaedra’s hand in marriage.
So, rushing into this in a way that feels characteristic of us both, we roll the days of the wedding ceremony into one – starting my morning with the cleansing baths of the proaulia and preparing for the gamos by noon.
Opora helps tie my chiton. It’s dark purple, woven through with threads of silver silk so that the whole thing glistens as I move.
Once the colour felt so unapologetically and inarguably Cretan – as valuable as the gilded plinths and plush carpets of the palace.
Now all I can see is Dionysus: the bunches of grapes and plum wine, the metallic glint in his eyes under the bruising sky.
‘Silen asked me to dance with them tonight,’ Opora says as she finishes tying the final knot above my shoulder.
‘What?’ Calybe shrieks. ‘You didn’t tell me that!’
‘I’m telling you all now,’ Opora says, flushing a bright red.
‘What exactly did they say?’ Myrto asks. ‘And how?’
‘Tone is important,’ I agree.
‘Ariadne, we’re supposed to be getting you ready for your wedding.’
I refuse to allow this attempt to deflect.
‘My wedding is devoid of one thing: any semblance of genuine affection. I thank you for providing it.’
Myrto looks at me sharply. ‘Dionysus likes you a great deal.’
‘Yes, but he has the emotional intelligence of a fermenting grape. Even imagining genuine affection caused panic; I can’t bear to think about what the reality might do to him.’
‘I think you suit each other,’ Opora determines. ‘You smile more when you’re with him.’
‘I should think I glower more too. Now will you please stop dodging our questions? What did Silen say?’
She sighs, but an excited smile twitches at the corner of her lips. ‘That weddings make you realize what matters. And then they asked me if I’d dance with them tonight. Said they thought that mattered too. That some things are worth the risk and perhaps I’m one of them.’
It feels absurd to pay this much attention to my appearance when I’m marrying someone like Dionysus, who will likely be donning accessories made from pine cones and sticks.
But Dionysus invited the gods and even while I know nothing I could possibly do could rival the beauty of the goddesses, it still feels like the sort of thing I ought to run a brush through my hair for.
Though Myrto did that for me before shearing it to my shoulders, dedicating the trimmed locks to Artemis.
It feels odd – too light, brushing my skin in a way it never has before.
Back home, hair is cut for ritual and ceremony.
Weddings, yes. But funerals too. Mother always felt that if we trimmed it, we might be tempting fate.
Like the scissors through our hair might very well be those of the Fates cutting the life thread.
I’m toying with the newly shorn edges as I slip into Dionysus’s tent. I can hear distant music and festivities. We won’t be married until sunset. But the others have decided that’s not long enough to celebrate – as though they do not party often enough – and have begun without us.
Still, we must give the Olympians time to show up – and waiting till sunset is as long as we can allow.
‘Oh,’ I say, as I catch sight of Dionysus running about inside.
The tent is in disarray, fabric everywhere, accessories tossed into corners, snacks lying abandoned, like preparing for the wedding has been something akin to a cyclone.
In the corner, Sterope is delightedly rolling on her back, knocking about a ball of catnip and adding a large amount of shed fur to the chaos.
But none of that is what makes me stop. It’s Dionysus – draped in wine-dark cloth that accentuates every finely honed muscle, as stacked with gold cuffs and necklaces as I am with silver – and hair, those long coiling locks of burnished copper shorn to the jaw.
I’m clutching Phaedra’s aulos – had been intending on saying … something. Suggesting someone play it, maybe? Some homage to Crete? But right now I can’t remember anything of import and I place the reed on a side table.
‘What?’ Dionysus’s brows furrow and a hand goes to one of those curls, tucking it behind an ear.
‘Oh? This? I told you, gender is a bit of fun dress-up to me, and we are putting on a performance. So I thought I’d pick and choose.
Women cut their hair in honour of Artemis, right, so why shouldn’t I? ’
I blink. ‘I liked it long,’ I say stupidly.
Dionysus grows positively radiant. ‘Ariadne.’ Even the way my name is spoken is laced with that infuriating, teasing warmth. ‘Don’t worry, you can run your fingers through this just as well.’
I narrow my eyes, trying to get a hold of myself. ‘You think you’ll so annoy me I’ll resort to pulling your hair?’
‘If you ask nicely.’
I bristle, which I imagine is precisely what Dionysus wanted.
‘So, you … How are you … That is to say …’
‘Who knew a haircut could have you so flustered.’ Dionysus closes the space between us. ‘I should have done this weeks ago.’
‘Are you still … costuming as a man, then? Is that how you want me to think of you?’
‘Think of me however you like, just as long as you think of me.’
‘Dionysus, an answer, please.’
‘Still playing dress-up as a man, yes,’ he confirms. ‘Accessorizing as a woman. Throwing in a few things of both and neither, sort of all at once. I contain multitudes, darling. So I really don’t mind how you think of me – just as long as it’s Dionysus first and everything else second.’
‘So you’ll be my … husband? My partner? Something else?’
Dionysus shrugs. ‘Ariadne, are you alright? This seems like it shouldn’t be the thing on your mind before we marry.’
My fingers reach for his hair almost of their own accord, and he lets me brush them against the shorn strands.
Slightly uneven. Like he did it himself.
I might have enjoyed the longer curls, but this frames his face so well I could cut myself on his jawline or whet a blade against the jut of his cheeks.
‘I know this is a ruse, but it still matters to me,’ I say. And then, more earnest: ‘You matter to me. So if I’m to tie my destiny with yours, I’d like to know you as authentically as I can.’
The cockiness falters, just a little. ‘Dionysus. That’s how you know me.
Husband. God. All those gendered terms are just language to explain a person.
Which is important. I don’t mean to dismiss what certainly means a great deal to many people, including those who experience the world as I do.
But personally I see it as a part of the ruse and, frankly, however you refer to me doesn’t change what I am.
I’m not sure any language can encapsulate that.
So describe me as you wish, and know me as the person I am. ’
‘Dionysus,’ I agree.
‘Ariadne?’
‘Hmm?’
‘You can stop playing with my hair now.’
I realize I’m still toying with the strands and my hand falls abruptly to my side.
Dionysus’s eyes shine with delight. ‘You’re nervous.’
‘I’ve never got this far before,’ I admit. ‘I’m normally abandoned by now.’
‘Well, I’d been considering it, but then you swanned in here looking like you arose straight from the baths of Aphrodite and I’ve decided to give this marriage thing a shot.’
It takes me a moment to realize he’s complimented me. He’s gazing at me steadfastly, as though daring me to deny it, or to brush it off with an insult tossed back in his direction.
My mouth feels suddenly dry, caught in the gaze of those verdant eyes. They shine bright – a promising kind of green: sun-drenched meadows and unruly forests and the sort of vegetation I once clung to when washed up on these isolated shores.
Why are you denying this? It would be oh so fun.
I bite my lip, like that might alleviate the pressure of wanting to press them against his.
Because I can’t trust this feeling. Look where it led me last time …
That’s the problem, isn’t it? When they told us to protect ourselves, to resist temptation and arm ourselves against the promises of lovers, I always imagined it as just that: a fortification to build.
Defences to stack. When boys came, laden with desire, it would be a campaign of siege.
Something to withstand until, finally, with enough perseverance, the battered walls of our resistance might crumble.
There was never any mention of the fact we might want to. It was their desire we had to resist; ours was non-existent, the sort of thing well-bred young girls would never even have to consider.
Well, I wanted. I said yes. I agreed to everything he did to me and now I can scarcely breathe when I think of it.
I cannot risk this again.
Revenge, that’s the tangible thing I have to hold. Revenge, which prompts me to wield this marriage like a blade, not cut myself upon it. I do not beat Theseus by losing myself in a marriage, becoming nothing more than the doting wife to Dionysus’s great deeds.
But just as I’m about to reassert that, to remind Dionysus of the rules of this endeavour, he takes a step back and declares: ‘I have a gift.’
‘What? That’s nice, thank – Oh, absolutely not.’
He reveals a crown of pine cones – studded with dried figs and a few cuttings of ivy.
He scowls. ‘I worked very hard on this.’
‘Did you not just say I looked like I’d been swept in on a shell from Aphrodite’s baths?’
‘I don’t think I mentioned a shell.’
‘And you want me to wear that? No.’
‘No? But you’re my wife, Ariadne. My symbols will be yours and you said yourself our destinies are to become entwined.’
‘I also said you’ll take my suggestions seriously. No.’
He sighs, a great, heaving, terribly exaggerated sigh, and tosses the pine cone crown on the table. ‘I guess I’ll have to give you this one instead.’
And from a pouch I hadn’t realized he’d also been clutching, he withdraws a diadem.