CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THEY THROW ME BACK IN that dark little room. It must be low, deep – because I can feel each and every wave.
Sailing away from Dionysus – wherever he is. That he’s not here is my only reprieve – but still, bound as I am, sick and starving, I keep returning to the fact that he was missing when I fled Crete.
He has to be okay. He must.
Because if he’s not and I’m here …
I try to escape, of course. Though it’s not much use when I can feel the boat moving.
My powers, when they have appeared, have been instinctive.
Now, with hours spent locked in the bowels of the ship, I try again and again to channel them. To do it on purpose.
And there’s no true escape – no path to tread on the ocean. But a way out … Each slight tug on the rope, the next strand, the next coil. And I feel that path unfurl, just the slightest amount to tell me this is the first step.
Slipping my bonds.
Which I don’t do just yet – not when they would only retie them tighter.
I will only have one chance at this.
I’m dragged back before Perseus a handful of times. The same questions, the same rants and lectures.
You belonged to him and now you belong to me – the sooner you realize that, the easier this will be.
Loyalty is in a woman’s nature – it’s commendable. But if the roles were reversed, do you think he’d be keeping your secrets? He’s probably fucking one of those many, many women in his retinue as we speak.
Dionysus is weak and so his followers are weak. Power trickles – and when I have it, so will the men who follow me.
But he just mocked Theseus and my father for believing power flowed down – and all at once I see what this is: rhetoric. A way to gain a following.
He’s practising for godhood.
The same way Dionysus builds renown through fun and entertainment, Perseus would do it through ego – by promising boys they can be great and strong and powerful because they are already male, and if they have no other place to exert that great strong power, the nearest woman will do.
Does he even believe all this himself? Or is it just a way to manipulate men into following him and clawing his way to power?
All these men, so desperate for godhood and immortality.
And I never even questioned it, because of course people would want power. Would want to live forever. But would I?
Sure, probably. I never thought much beyond my eighteenth birthday, but having survived it and freed the Athenians, it seems there’s still a lot I’d like to do.
A lot of women to help. I would not be dissimilar to Dionysus – wanting to spread joy, to tell people happiness matters.
That life is about how much you dance and sing and smile.
And, selfishly, I want to dance and sing and smile myself for as many years to come. Being powerless is crushing, debilitating, has had me holding my breath for half my life – so if power is its opposite then yes, I want it.
But what would I do for it? Certainly not this – destroying someone else because I want what they have.
Besides, Perseus and the other heroes already have those things I want.
So if they’re free anyway, then what’s driving them?
Days pass – at least, I think they do. It is difficult to tell with no natural light and no meals and a mind growing increasingly hazy, a mouth dry, a stomach devouring itself.
I press my ear to the crack of the door – and when someone stops outside I roll back to the centre of the room so they can drag me to Perseus.
I only mean to perhaps garner some sense of routine – when the men leave their beds to go up on deck, or return for meals or … something. Anything.
I did not expect the hardest part of captivity to be how damn boring it is – though admittedly the shoulder cramping and numb wrists are a close second, or perhaps the starvation.
Or the way a violent wave tosses me against the walls and floorboards, without hands to temper my fall. Or – no, best not to dwell on it.
At the door, I catch voices. Conversation.
‘… are we going to have an actual destination?’
‘… so stupid, going round in circles …’
‘… don’t imagine … partying when we have her …’
‘… starve before we can kill her.’
And on and on – enough to figure out, finally, what they mean to do. No, not enough to murder me. They mean to plant my body at the next revelry – to claim that it is Dionysus’s rites and the frenzy of it all that killed me.
I can’t even conceive of what that would do to him, other than, perhaps, entirely what Perseus means to do: to make Dionysus so weak he can murder him too.
For all his talk of grandeur and strength, the man is terrified of taking on Dionysus at his full power – where a snap of my husband’s fingers might have him squeaking forever.
But would Dionysus even host a revelry right now? I’ve only been missing a few days – he’s hardly going to throw a party.
Unless word had spread that I was missing.
And all those people who believed in him – in us – began to doubt him, denting his power enough that performing rites was the only way to harness it once more.
Power he would need if he hoped to rescue me …
When I’m next dragged to that room, Perseus is wearing another fine chiton – a rich ochre interspersed with golden strands. And I realize it’s another projection: look at all the fine clothes I own, the riches I hold, the women I have to weave for me – follow me and you could have it too.
If I remain here, I might end up as one of them.
I feel too weak to lift my head to meet him. I don’t even feel hungry any more, but like a hard rock has settled in my gut, taut and cold.
‘You shouldn’t be fighting like this,’ he says – and he sounds almost gentle.
‘Women ought to be looked after, nurtured by those who can guide them. Come on, little demi-thing, answer my questions and I promise you will be cared for. Fed. Watered. Answer enough, prove yourself loyal to me and I might even remove your bonds.’
Oh, how kind.
I let my eyes flutter shut – I let him think he’s winning something.
‘It’s a bay near Apollonas,’ I say. It is not a complete lie – I couldn’t do that. Perseus saw which way our ship sailed about the island. But near is relative, and there were many beaches that we passed between Apollonas and the true bay opposite Donousa.
Perseus unfurls his map. ‘Here?’
‘A little further right – yes, there.’
He looks up, his eyes narrowing. Slowly, he rolls the map up. And then once more he is leaning across to tower over me. ‘For each lie you tell me, Ariadne, I will cut off a finger. When I reach the last, I’ll tear out your treacherous tongue as well.’
Well, this is far more familiar ground. The sort of threat my father made if dinner was late.
‘I’m not lying,’ I say, with the sort of earnestness that years under my father’s roof taught me to fake.
Perseus raps on the door. ‘Get her some food.’
He loosens the bonds at my hands until they fall away entirely. Relieved, I rub at my wrists, feeling sharp pricks where the blood flows back.
He comes to sit opposite me – evidently I’m not trusted to be unsupervised with my hands free. ‘What’s the bay like?’ he asks. ‘This supposed sacred land?’
Ah – he wants to pry for more details. Perhaps he hopes food will loosen my tongue.
‘Beautiful,’ I say – and proceed to give a very detailed account of beaches and trees that might mark it out as anywhere, on any island.
A meal arrives: a small bowl of soup – Zeus-a-mercy, soup – and a hard bread roll. Now, how to go about this subtly … perhaps get him talking in turn?
‘Can you … your …’ I start, as though I am exactly what he wants – a weak, frightened little girl. He waves for me to go on. ‘Did you really slay Medusa?’
His lips press into a thin smile. ‘Of course. A magnificent beast – an island littered with the stone bodies of men who had come before, thinking they had what it took to kill the monster. Boys like Theseus, who thought only of glory and not the hard work it takes to get there – to earn it.’
As he speaks, I pull a chunk of bread from the roll.
‘The gods truly offered their items? They never do that.’
His eyes spark. ‘No, they do not. But they recognized my greatness. From Hades, the helm of darkness so I could approach the monster without its knowledge. From Hermes, a sword and winged sandals to not sound a single step. From Athena, a great shield to only spy the beast’s reflection – and a bag to stow its head.
They approached me with the quest – chose me out of every hero because they knew what I always had, growing up in a small fishing village with no knowledge of my immortal father or my mother’s royal lineage, no proof at all of my greatness other than what I felt in my own heart: that I was destined for something so much larger than the nothing I had. ’
And somewhere in his tirade, I’ve shovelled a few spoonfuls of thin, watery soup into my mouth and slipped that chunk of bread into my pocket.
‘That sounds so difficult,’ I say. ‘Being raised as though you were a nobody when you obviously had such divine heritage.’
He snorts. ‘It was the sort of place where the weak aren’t coddled. Where you learn quickly to be stronger than your emotions. It made me the man I am – I wouldn’t change a single moment.’
He continues on as I eat the rest. It ought to be delicious after so long without, but my stomach churns like it’s lost its tolerance for such needless things as digestion. Still, I force it down, not knowing when the next meal might come – and what Perseus might ask of me for it.
The second the spoon hits the bowl, those ropes are back on my wrists. ‘I want all of his symbols next,’ he says. ‘Give me enough and you might be rewarded with a turn about the deck. Fresh air. A glimpse of sunlight. Consider it.’
He calls for his men to escort me back to my dark, dank cell.
I slip my bonds as soon as the door shuts behind me.
A small lamp struggles to cut through the gloom, the oil within nearly drained. But it is still lit – just. I race over, pulling the bread from my pocket and tearing it into four small pieces.