CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE #2
Evidently, like me, they’ve found it.
I was bound, starved and promised a violent death – but this is worse than every moment of that. Dionysus fears nothing so much as his supposed madness creeping back in. All I’d been able to promise was that I would be by his side if it did.
And I wasn’t here.
‘He spoke to you about it, then?’ they ask.
‘Not … not really. He was scared.’
Silen leans against the curved edge of the boat and regards me. ‘It’s not just hallucinations. It’s mood swings, delusions, sometimes it’s not feeling anything at all.’
I pull my arms in close, like I could hold myself together for his sake. ‘Is he going to be alright?’
‘Yes,’ Silen says at once. ‘I think he’s been preparing for a turn like this for some time – this is his own mind, not Hera’s curse.’
Hera! Of course!
‘Dionysus said Heracles had to get a potion from my cousin Medea to lift Hera’s curse when she inflicted it on him. Maybe she can help Dionysus too.’
Silen looks up, hesitant. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘No, but –’ A lurch in my gut, a soft push to the right. An instinct.
The power to always know which way to go – but it was never like this, was it? Insistent and clear and loud?
Perhaps my power really is growing.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I can get us to her. Maybe she can lift his madness.’
Silen places their hand over mine. ‘Maybe,’ they say. ‘But maybe she can’t. It’s a great direction for us to head in, but let’s not focus right now on it lifting but rather helping him while he is in its throes. Let’s not refer to it as madness either. I don’t imagine it will help matters.’
That is fair. It feels so condemning and dismissive, like Dionysus no longer holds any value when he is the most important thing to us all.
‘Did he mention his father?’ Silen asks and when I nod they continue. ‘It’s not true. The Keres aren’t either, I don’t think.’
‘What? How could we possibly know?’
They rub at a spot beneath their horn like it’s where tension gathers.
‘Ordinarily that’s the issue. Dionysus’s life is so absurd it’s hard to unpick what’s delusion and what’s fact – why not his father when his stepmother is trying to kill him?
How do we determine he’s hearing things when the Keres truly do follow heroes around?
But that is also partly why his delusions and hallucinations take these forms – it’s the framework he’s living in.
In this instance, Hermes insists his father bears him no ill will, so while that’s not definitive … it’s something we can work with.’
I nod, and wish I could pinpoint the source of my own tension because I feel it building everywhere. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much,’ I say. ‘They’re real to him. Do we try to dissuade him, to tell him they’re false or …’
I trail off because Silen is already shaking their head.
‘No, I can’t pretend I’m an expert, but in my experience – well, it is as you say.
They are real to him. Sometimes in its early days he understands that his mind is conjuring it all.
But he’s past that now. Every now and then he might have an inkling he’s in an episode even if he can’t identify the particulars.
But, broadly speaking, it does him no favours to be denied his own reality.
So sympathize, stay calm and keep your responses short where you can.
His brain is firing in so many places, across so many paths.
He’s processing the real world and the one he’s conjured simultaneously …
You might have seen instances where his own powers fail him because he’s so mentally exhausted. So take it slow and keep it simple.’
‘I can do that,’ I say. Of course I can do that. All I want right now is to be with him, curled in his arms and held tight. To kiss away the worries crowding his mind. He thinks himself in danger. Hears screaming spirits foretelling doom – I do not want him facing that alone.
‘And …’ Silen’s voice changes – hardens.
‘What is it?’ I demand.
‘He might be volatile, Ariadne. He might say things he does not truly mean. Might hurt your feelings or wound your heart without intending to, so please just … know that nothing he says or does right now is personal. His reality has altered. That includes all of us and even his own thoughts. He’s suffering. ’
It no longer scares me to be within the ship. Not after facing Theseus in my own home. And not after being held captive within another.
I find Dionysus in his quarters.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask – and oh, how many times have I entered a room with such a question on my tongue? It is almost a relief to ask once more – even if it is softer this time.
Shards of smashed amphorae lie scattered across the floor and Dionysus appears to be tucking them into the cracks between the wooden walls.
‘They’re made of clay,’ he says. ‘A natural insulator against my father’s lightning. So I’m creating a safe room.’
I reach for a shard. It does not seem the worst idea to create a place where he does not have to fear an attack. I tuck it into a nook in the wall.
He looks at me like the world suddenly weighs a little less, or as though he might have found a place to lean, to rest for a while. I offer a small smile and reach for another shard. ‘Let me help.’