CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
IDO NOT WAKE WITH the sun but with shouting.
Dionysus and I are a tangled heap of limbs, our legs entwined, my head on his chest, his arms tight around me.
His skin is so warm, flushed against mine, almost uncomfortably so, but I do not want to move, as though the only way to cling to this contentment is to never leave his embrace.
So for a few glorious seconds, I convince myself the yells are simply returning revellers from the night before.
But there is an undeniable note of panic to the shrieks.
‘Dionysus,’ I say, scrambling from the bed.
He grumbles a protest.
‘Dionysus!’ I demand, searching through the abandoned pile of cloth for something to throw on.
He sighs into his pillow and pats the space on the bed where I’d just lain, scowling when he finds it empty. Then he opens his eyes, gaze darting around until he sees me holding a chiton out to him.
‘Ariadne, could you please get back into bed and hold me until a more reasonable hour?’
Then the noise solidifies – those cries – and his name carries through. He is up and dressed in seconds.
We fling ourselves from the tent to watch the horizon burn.
Flames flicker over distant hills – enough light to see the smoke churning up into the dark clouds above.
But it is not that I stare at. As he emerges into the cold night air, what was half hidden in the tent becomes distinctly apparent.
Dionysus shimmers – the air around him flickering, the copper strands of his hair half alight, a golden glow that clings to his every inch.
And that warmth burning however many miles away flares beside me.
‘Dionysus,’ I say, reaching for him, but his skin is so hot I flinch.
He turns, startled, and his always bright eyes are downright luminous.
‘You’re glowing.’
‘What?’ He blinks, confused. Then he looks down at his own hands, shining like the moon above. ‘No. No, no –’ His terror bleeds his voice cold, drains the colour from his face, and he stumbles back over his own feet, clutches at the tent as he trips and the fabric smoulders.
‘Hermes!’ he screams – while everyone else is yelling for him, pointing at the horizon; the only word that isn’t Dionysus is Naxos, again and again and again.
Our home is burning.
Dionysus hurries back, ducking into the tent. I move to follow but someone clutches at my wrist. Zosime.
‘He is a god, Ariadne,’ she says. ‘You know what happens when they ignite.’
She is the only one not looking at the flames churning from Naxos because it means nothing to her. It is only the place she sailed away from when they left me.
I pull my arm back, but she holds tight – tight enough that I remember.
My mother asked to see his true immortal form. It burned her to cinders.
And I hesitate, just long enough for Hermes to appear and chase after Dionysus. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, issuing a mock salute and still, evidently, far too drunk. ‘Time to give my baby brother the talk about all the perfectly natural changes one can expect of a godly body.’
And so, with nothing else to do, I watch the flames curl over the horizon, Perseus’s words ringing in my head: I’m going to destroy those symbols one by one.
Dionysus emerges again when the sun really does rise and the smoke still wafts across the horizon. By that point I’ve worried my belt so thoroughly the rope has frayed into individual strands.
But he doesn’t look weak – not as I’d expect if Perseus really did burn down his sanctuary.
So did he fall for the false location I provided?
‘Are you alright?’ I ask.
‘Am I alright is the better question,’ Hermes says, a step behind him and rubbing his temples. ‘I kindly gave your husband the one vial of nectar I managed to snag from Apollo, so now I am fighting this hangover the mortal way. I need grease. Salt. A dagger to the head.’
‘Myrto is almost certainly on it,’ I say, reaching for Dionysus. He hesitates, but exhales the moment my fingers slide between his – a perfectly acceptable temperature.
‘It must have worked,’ he says – but he sounds devastated rather than pleased, looking at the smoke still churning into the clouds. ‘Manifesting a godly form while my own sacred island burned? The Olympians must truly believe in me.’
My stomach twists – because what if Perseus had struck a day earlier? What if Dionysus had been weaker, or still sick, or simply drained from some complicated spell – and then Naxos was wrenched from within him? Would he even have survived it?
‘Come on,’ Hermes says, pressing a spot between his eyes. ‘Let’s get this big nightmarish discussion out of the way so I can bash my skull against a rock in peace.’
We head down to the quiet of the shore – and maybe I’m deluding myself, but I can smell the smoke across the waves, even as it falters.
‘I told Perseus where your sanctuary was,’ I blurt. ‘Well, I pointed near. It was the only way I could get food to sacrifice to you.’
Dionysus pulls me closer, his arm wrapping around my waist, and firmly, his eyes locked on mine, he says: ‘Ariadne, if you’re ever kidnapped again, please tell them every single secret I hold dear if it gets you so much as a pine cone.’
‘No one needs pine cones as desperately as you seem to suspect,’ I say – but I can’t pretend the relief isn’t blessedly soothing. He does not hate me – does not blame me.
‘On the topic of kidnap,’ Hermes says, like this is a delightful segue, ‘Theseus has abducted Princess Helen of Sparta.’
‘What?’ I blink – baffled. ‘Another woman already? Is that how he’s hoping to make his legacy? A string of conquests?’
‘It worked for our father,’ Dionysus says darkly.
Hermes winces. ‘Not quite. Helen is seven years old.’
My fingers clutch Dionysus tighter. ‘Excuse me?’
‘By all accounts he’s decided that a hero as renowned as he ought to have a wife descended from the gods.
He failed to obtain you or Phaedra and, well, why settle for a grandchild of Helios when you could go straight to a daughter of Zeus?
There aren’t too many of those about – so why not take a child and wait for her to grow old enough to marry so you at least have a backup option? ’
‘Oh yes, why not,’ Dionysus seethes. ‘A backup, you say? Who’s his first choice if not this girl?’
Hermes arches a brow. ‘Persephone.’
‘Persephone,’ Dionysus repeats. ‘Goddess of flowers and Queen of the Underworld who, if I recall, is very much still married to its king?’
‘Unbearably, irredeemably besotted with its king and he with her. It’s horrific, frankly.
But Theseus doesn’t care about that. He’s in this gambit with his friend Pirithous.
So he’s taken Helen and now they’re off to steal Persephone for Pirithous – though I can’t really see Theseus taking the seven-year-old when a full goddess is on offer. ’
‘She’s not on offer,’ Dionysus snaps. ‘She’s at risk. I’ve seen what Theseus is capable of.’
‘And I’ve seen what Persephone is capable of. And Hades, for that matter. This might rectify your Theseus problem forever.’
‘And Helen?’ I ask. ‘What about her? We have to help.’
‘Her older brothers have declared war and are currently sailing to Athens. One of them is a son of Zeus too so I expect they’ll win, especially with Theseus on a pilgrimage to the Underworld.’
I shake my head, unable to believe this is even something we are discussing. ‘He can’t seriously think this will work.’
‘But he’s seen it work. You have powers – he’s witnessed them – and you married a god.
So he’s trying the same. I imagine you’re next on the list of brides to kidnap when he fails to abduct Persephone.
And if Perseus is set on destroying sources of Dionysus’s power and you only gave him the sanctuary, then as his wife and origin of half his myths, I imagine you’re Perseus’s next target too. ’
I fall silent and Dionysus turns to me expectantly.
‘He might have said exactly that,’ I admit, albeit reluctantly.
Hermes grimaces, appearing to steel himself before turning once more to Dionysus.
‘There were rumours I heard last night – of things you’d supposedly done.
Of course you hadn’t – because we’ve all been with you the entire time but …
Ariadne, you said Perseus intended to kill you and plant your body at a revelry, right?
I think that’s his plan. To commit atrocities and blame them on Dionysus. ’
Dionysus’s hand tenses in mine. ‘What sort of atrocities?’
Hermes’s eyes flutter shut. ‘He killed babies. Then said it was their own mothers, caught up in a Dionysian frenzy as they performed rites. There was a man, torn apart by his own daughters. The same story – you punishing them for not worshipping you. And a Thracian king who supposedly murdered his wife and son. He’s saying you’re … afflicting them all with madness.’
Dionysus stills, and I can feel it as that settles – his greatest fear and worst horror, turned into a weapon he supposedly wields against others.
Hera had warned of the consequences: It is a string of falsehoods and rumours that will undo him in the end.
Who could possibly worship Dionysus after hearing stories like that?
‘We need to stop him,’ I say. ‘He’s acting now because he saw you at Cabarnis. Because your powers faltered on his ship. He thinks your divinity is failing. But you glowed with immortal radiance only this morning. He doesn’t know that the Olympians themselves believe in you.’
Hermes nods. ‘You have more power than you’ve ever had. Whatever threat he has levelled against you … I don’t think he expected to face you as he will.’
‘Face him?’ Dionysus mutters, marked by the same fear I saw only hours ago.
‘Yes,’ I say resolutely. If I’m another symbol he wants to eradicate, I refuse to simply wait for him to try. ‘If he’s trying to destroy elements of your worship then let’s take the fight to him before he can hurt anyone else.’
‘It’s too dangerous,’ Dionysus insists, glancing between us like he cannot believe we are suggesting this. ‘If he’s killing strangers to spread lies, imagine what he’d do to the thiasus. I can’t ask my followers to take that risk.’
‘Is that not our decision?’
I turn, and there is Silen, stony-faced and resolute. Beside them, Opora, her eyes filling with tears – but she nods in agreement. Myrto, Zosime and Charis follow, falling quiet as they approach and sense the tension. The concern.
‘It was never only our own good time we cared about,’ Opora says. Silen’s hand falls to her shoulder, and she covers it with her own almost instinctively. ‘If other people are under threat, well, I joined to help them too.’
‘Absolutely,’ Myrto rushes, looking between us and piecing it together. ‘If you’re at risk, Dionysus, then we all are. So trust us as we trust you. What’s going on and how can we help?’
Medea finds me by the water.
‘I’ve heard you’re going to war, cousin,’ she says.
‘Potentially,’ I admit. ‘I think we’re all hoping it will just be another revelry – to beat Perseus in his own town by turning his people against him.’
Medea stares at me, and gives a soft shake of her head. ‘Well, you certainly didn’t find such optimism in any bloodline I share.’
Perhaps I did – because I’m not sure I believe it either. Perseus would not hesitate to kill his own people to prove a point – I doubt the gates of Tiryns will be thrown open in welcome.
‘Hermes can’t come with us,’ I say. ‘Perseus is acting against Dionysus so he’s allowed to retaliate but Hermes can’t oppose a child of Zeus so directly – so he said he can take you to Colchis if that’s where you want to be.’
Medea nods, her hand flitting to her stomach. ‘My father has no heir. So if I return like this …’
‘He’ll forgive you.’
Medea looks away – and I know I’ll never get an answer from her, will never know if she really did all they claim, but I know in that glance that the truth is complicated – possibly more so than I can ever understand.
‘Our stories go on,’ she says. ‘Even when they try to end them – when they leave us on islands or drive us from cities. We continue. We don’t end when they stop speaking our names.’
‘Thank you,’ I say – and it’s impossible to look at her right now and not see my mother in her high cheekbones, or Phaedra in her frown.
Just how many farewells are expected of me?
Is there no world in which one day, at a revelry, perhaps, they might come together again?
I feel so much stronger when I’m with them.
‘I don’t know what we would have done without you.
You didn’t need to help him but you did and I’m so very grateful. ’
Would Dionysus still be locked in his own personal labyrinth?
Her hands are clasped tight but she looks at me with the sort of softness that tells me if she could, if she would allow herself, she might reach for me.
‘You know I didn’t do it for him, Ariadne.
Plenty of people saw you as well last night.
You were the one engaging with the mortals, checking on all those people who suffered such unfortunate accidents and standing up to Hera herself.
You have my personal thanks for that one.
You are so much more powerful than you think. ’
And then she finally does reach for me, a hand on my shoulder.
A weight I feel long after she’s gone.
Hermes manages to run a comb through his hair ahead of his departure, fussing more than usual while muttering about neglected duties and forget Zeus, Hades will flay me alive for the number of souls I’ve allowed to find their own way to the afterlife until even he seems unsure about which way he’s headed once he drops Medea off: up to Olympus or down to the Underworld.
He winks as he leaves. ‘Throw some bread in a fire if you need me.’
And, trusting in the people who trusted him, Dionysus speaks to the thiasus.
I half expect him to emerge from the tent with his fur cape and his golden thyrsus, perhaps letting some of that radiant light shine forth.
But he doesn’t stand above everyone and give a rousing speech. He sits beside Sterope, running his hand through her fur, and people approach him in small groups. He answers their questions and reassures them that no one is under any obligation to do this.
‘Tiryns will be the most hostile city we’ve ever ventured to,’ he says. ‘It is a risk. But it’s your decision whether you wish to take it. We sail for Argos tomorrow.’
And in the end, only a handful of them choose to stay behind and wait for after …
Because there will, surely, be an after.