CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT’S PARTYING AS RESISTANCE. That’s what Myrto said once. But this? This is partying as rage, as rebellion, as Furies screeching in the night.
First there are the rituals. The lifting of the veil – and the hasty sourcing of one, Calybe and Opora arguing over which of them was supposed to have brought it until Sterope runs through with one clenched in her jaws.
The pouring of libations – to Hera, out of obligation, and then to Dionysus too, though there is no point wasting good wine when he is here to taste it himself, so we loop our arms through one another, raising a cup to our lips.
It’s a dark vintage, rich and oaky. When I kiss him again, it’s all I can taste.
Now there is the frenzy.
Music plays, drinks are poured, feet stamp and surely Olympus cannot ignore such a ruckus. Surely they wish they had not refused us.
If Hermes’s enjoyment is anything to go by, if they don’t regret it, they will soon. If he can remember it.
It is nearly impossible to keep track of it all. Somewhere, there is a feast. Somewhere else, games that involve chance and risk and lead inevitably to discarded caution and colliding lips. Elsewhere, maenads run barefoot through the forest, weapons drawn on the hunt.
Everywhere it is salt and sweat and passion.
It is all very Dionysian.
He’s done it. Branded himself successfully, and it is chaotic, gleeful hedonism. It is nothing real that lingers beyond, certainly no heart and no feeling and no love. Unrestraint, where I feel weighted by the ties binding me.
But I dance anyway, like if I keep twirling around the dance floor my worries might fly from me the way my hairpins tumble, might fan out like my skirts and might be kicked aside like my sandals, eventually, when the leather smarts.
Dionysus’s hands graze across me: my waist, my hip, the back of my neck as he pulls my lips to meet his.
His touch is everywhere, as I promised, but it is hesitant too, even though I’m reaching for him as well, even though I’m not altogether sure I want him to stop.
I have to remind myself it’s a performance every time he holds me or gazes at me and certainly every time his lips brush my own.
It is almost a relief when the pipes give way to that dance we created, one that is also a sort of game with its constant switching of partners. I see Silen turn to Opora and then my hands are taken up by Hermes.
‘This is awfully brave of you,’ he says.
‘Dancing with you? Are you truly so dreadful?’
He snorts. ‘With ill-configured sandals, yes. But I meant marrying Dionysus. There are many who would see him dead, and now here you are, offering your head beside his.’
Gods, must we do this now? I feel too dizzy – the spinning and the wine – and I don’t want to doubt this. ‘I understand you whisked him away from harm throughout his childhood.’
Hermes nods. ‘Father’s orders. Hera already had it in for him.
Now she’s one of a long list, or so I hear.
Quite clever of him, tying himself to your legacy.
But easy to break a thing like that. You stop being the hero who rescued the maiden if she dies on your watch.
If another man steals her in turn. If she’s executed to restore a slighted king’s honour.
You’ve made yourself the trophy of the tale, and those can be snatched.
Or smelted, if you’d rather they never had the chance to be won. ’
My father would have me assassinated anyway. Theseus too, if I spoke up against him.
I have hardly altered my fate all that much. Perhaps added Perseus to the list of those who might kill me in their war against Dionysus, but once two kings want you dead, what’s a third?
Still, I feel a sudden chill cut through the warm night air. And in it, a whisper.
No one can consider that inconsequential. They might see me as a symbol, but symbols are threats all the same.
‘I’ll grant you that, Lord Hermes.’ I nod.
The time comes to turn and switch partners but I clutch his hands tighter, like I would prove a point.
‘But I am not an object to be fought over, or a medal to award a victor. I’m the daughter of a tyrant.
The fires of the sun burn in my veins. And I am as capable of wreaking havoc as any so-called hero.
Let them come for me. Dionysus will protect me, and if he cannot, we will learn just what sort of monsters my family can create. ’
Hermes revolves in a final, wide-arced loop. When he faces me once more, he’s smiling. ‘I can see why Dionysus married you.’
At midnight, we are dancing still.
Until, suddenly, the music stops and the crowd parts.
And there’s the girl I once expected to see on this island, stepping from the forest like she has been there all along.
She wears a short tunic, dark and fraying around the hem.
Her hair is swept up into an equally fraying knot, silver in the moonlight and glowing too – though that’s to be expected when she took the moon from Selene as surely as her brother Apollo took the sun from my grandfather.
‘Artemis,’ Dionysus greets, sweeping into a low bow. ‘You honour us with your presence.’
Artemis offers him a quick, dismissive glance before turning her attention back to me.
‘I cannot exactly congratulate you on an institution like marriage,’ she says, her voice lower than I’d expected.
She looks scarcely out of adolescence, but her cadence is level and assured even as she winces at the thought of marriage.
Apparently eternal maidenhood was one of the first things she demanded of her father, Zeus.
‘But I certainly wish you happiness. May I speak to you somewhere private, Ariadne?’
A god wishes to speak to me alone? Yes, I just spoke to Hermes, but that was in the middle of a dance floor. And Artemis … Well, as much as I had hoped for salvation, I’d also worried about her vengeance – fearful I’d wronged her by sleeping with Theseus on her island.
But Naxos isn’t her island and she is our guest, so xenia would prevent anything untoward.
I nod and lead her to Dionysus’s tent.
‘Can I get you anything, my lady? A drink or –’
‘No, that’s quite alright,’ she says quickly. ‘I only wish for your company.’
Great. Perfect. Not only am I alone with a goddess, she’s sober and I’ve been sampling enough of our vintages tonight I could probably rival Dionysus for their overview. I clutch the edge of the table like it might steady everything.
‘Marriage is a risk, don’t you think?’ she says idly, taking in the splendour of the tent.
‘It certainly does not feel that way with Dionysus.’
She snorts. ‘Right. Marriage is my stepmother’s domain and entering into it is reckless – Dionysus puts himself at her mercy. He puts you there too.’
The beat has started up once more outside, though in here it is a quiet echoing whisper. It makes the whole revelry feel very far away, though it is only a handful of steps.
Artemis turns her attention from the trinkets of Dionysus’s tent to me. ‘You heard what happened to Megara, did you not?’
Heracles and those labours that are making the gods consider him for their ranks – but they’re a punishment, things he must achieve as penance for the murder of his wife, Megara, and their children.
Hera struck Heracles with a curse that drove him from his very mind, turned reality into unreality and unreality into threat.
Is Artemis here to warn me? Just as Hermes tried to do?
‘Dionysus isn’t a demigod to be so afflicted. He’s a god.’
‘A touch of both, actually.’ Artemis shrugs.
‘The rest of us certainly don’t find our immortality fading away with a little neglect.
Our powers might become less potent. They might misfire.
But we do not lose ourselves because we were born into this divinity.
Dionysus leeched his immortality from my husband’s body, swelled with stolen radiance then dared to claim it as his own.
Now he runs around drumming up a meagre following to allow him to cling to it. ’
I’d felt warm, flustered from the wine and my own embarrassment, but now my blood runs cold, and, where she may not see it, my hand inches behind me for the aulos I left there.
‘And that is the man you chose to marry? To tie yourself to?’
‘Not out of choice,’ I say quickly. ‘I was betrayed by one who promised marriage but abandoned me instead, slighting the great Queen of the Heavens. I didn’t know of Dionysus’s divine heritage when we met.
I admit his legend never reached us in Crete, so when he found me I thought the best way to honour Hera would be to enter into marriage.
If she were displeased, I would annul it at once.
I care far more for her opinion than his. ’
She looks at me, stern and considering.
And I feign ignorance, keeping my eyes wide and helpless, hoping it might convince her it would be a waste of her own celestial power to bother with smiting me.
‘Too late for that, I’m afraid.’ Her being shimmers and she lets the disguise drop.
I take the moment of her distraction to fumble more avidly and finally my hand closes around the aulos.
Hera stands before me now, at her full height, and I drop to my knees like I hadn’t expected it from the moment the eternal virgin Artemis mentioned a husband. ‘Lady Hera! How delightful. Please do make yourself at home – xenia welcomes you.’
I wish to remind her of the laws binding her, protecting me, but she crosses to me in an instant, grasping my chin and giving a sharp yank up. She is fury made regal – stately brow and pitch-dark eyes, fine lines about a mouth twisted into a thoroughly displeased sneer.
‘Xenia pertains to guests,’ she says, her voice cold and low. ‘I am the goddess of marriage and this is a wedding. I am not a visitor – I am dominion itself. The only sacred law at play here is my will. And I am furious.’
I finally accept this is not the sort of situation I can de-escalate and dive out of her reach, fumbling for the reed, and suddenly it is a sharp, shrill whistle through my pursed lips.
Hera knocks it from my hands, her nails raking across my face. She grasps my hair, hauling me to my feet, and I scramble up, hands closing over hers as though I could pull her from me.
‘You stupid girl,’ she snarls. ‘Though that’s to be expected when you marry a man like that. I might not be able to curse him any more, but I can certainly hurt you.’
I can hear running outside, Sterope’s paws stampeding towards where the whistle shrieked, Dionysus calling after her.
‘He’ll lose you like he’s lost everything else. And you’ll lose yourself too – that is my decree, my wedding gift. Loss.’
She jabs at my forehead, and the world shifts, turns agile and fluid, tilting and transforming and, then, slipping cleanly away.