Chapter VIII
VIII
Athena leaves our island a few hours after we speak.
I do not hear directly from my father about what she said to him, but instead rely on the whispers of slaves to fill in the gaps.
From their accounts, I learn that Athena simply told my father she’d heard from enough witnesses to believe that Maheer’s death truly was an accident.
My involvement, it seems, never came up.
I hear no mention of her invitation for me to serve at her temple, but I have to believe she discussed that with him, too.
Even now, I find myself unable to entirely believe that that invitation was real.
Dinner that night begins without incident.
The slaves, I notice, move with new levity, and I imagine they are as relieved as the rest of us that Athena’s investigation of Maheer’s death is complete.
I make a mental note to find Theo later and tell him all that’s happened.
So far, I’ve shared the news of my invitation with no one, not even my sisters.
I will eventually, but for now it feels like something precious, something that belongs only to me and Athena.
I think of the words she said to me earlier.
You are young, educated, and your valor impresses me.
I impressed Athena. I impressed one of the most powerful goddesses in all the pantheon. Involuntarily, a smile pulls at my lips.
It is at that exact moment that my mother’s eyes cut to my father.
“When?” Her voice is low and lethal, and the smile drops from my face at once. Everyone in the hall, my sisters and the slaves alike, look up at her in surprise. My mother’s gaze stays fixed on my father.
“When what, Ceto?” My father’s feigned nonchalance fools no one. He is eyeing my mother warily.
“When were you going to tell me that you sold our daughter off to that pale, gray-eyed bitch?”
If our hall was quiet before, that was nothing compared to the silence that fills it now. The attendants who have been serving us stiffen. My sisters exchange confused looks, then turn to me. For his part, my father looks more fatigued than angry.
“I did not sell any of our daughters,” he says patiently, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Medusa has been invited to undergo the tests to serve as a priestess in Athena’s temple.”
Stheno and Euryale don’t speak, but I see them both start in surprise, then stare at me. Guilt stabs my chest. As an unspoken rule, we’ve never kept secrets from one another, until now. I wanted them to hear about it from me.
“It is not unprecedented,” my father continues. “Other Olympians have chosen mortals and demigods to serve them. It is an honor. Athena has also given me her word that Medusa will be permitted to return home intermittently. I have discussed the details of this arrangement with her at length.”
“She did not discuss them with me!” My mother bangs her fist against the table so hard the plates on it rattle.
It has been quite some time since I saw her this irritated, and I can’t understand why this specifically has rankled her so.
I think back to the way she and Athena eyed each other when Athena first arrived, and again I have the feeling that I am missing something deeper.
“Ceto,” my father warns, “compose yourself. I do not need to confer with you on matters of this household. I am lord and master here.”
“And yet, where the Olympians are concerned, you behave like a groveling boy,” my mother jeers.
“Tell me, did Athena even ask your permission, or did she demand our child’s servitude to make further fools of us?
” She laughs humorlessly. “Ah, I can see it now: the granddaughter of the once-revered Pontus and Gaia, the daughter of the once-great Phorcys and Ceto, no more than a common cupbearer.”
I want so badly to interrupt my mother. I want to tell her that Athena did not demand my servitude at all, that I’m happy to go. As if she can read my thoughts, Stheno casts me a sharp look that warns me to stay silent.
“Athena has no quarrel with us, nor with any gods of the Sea Court.” My father’s voice grows louder. “I will not risk inciting one by offending her.”
“You actually think this politicking with Olympians will raise your status and win you their favor.” My mother scoffs. “All you’ll win is their mockery when your back is turned. You will never be one of them.”
My father’s eyes flash. “What would you have me do, Ceto?” He rises, coming around the table to stand before her. “Would you have me spite Zeus’s favorite daughter? We would be decimated within a day, banished to the depths of Tartarus on sheer principle.”
My mother raises her chin imperiously. “I would rather spend an eternity in Tartarus’s darkness than a single day without my honor.
” She stands, too, so that their faces are nearly level.
“You forget we are primordial, Phorcys. We are the progeny of gods who came long before the Olympians.” Her eyes grow wet.
“We were once the ones with power. Now look at what we have been reduced to, appeasing the demands of that tyrant’s daughter. ”
“Zeus has been more than fair to the gods of the Sea Court,” my father says in an impatient voice.
“Fair?” My mother spits the word as though it’s poison. “Is that what you called it, when he stripped us of our true power, when he commanded us to stay on this forsaken island? Was that fair?”
I go cold at the same time Stheno and Euryale tense. My parents rarely speak of their origins, of the lives they had before our births. I detect something unfamiliar in my mother’s voice, a pain so old and raw it feels wrong to hear.
My mother changes tack, placing one hand on my father’s cheek. “There are whispers among some in the Sea Court,” she says in a softer voice, pressing her body against his. “Eurybia keeps an ear to the ground; she says Oceanus is plotting. There may soon be an opportunity for us to take back our—”
“Quiet yourself!” My father jerks away from my mother. “Do you mean to see our halls laid to waste? What you speak of is treason.”
“I will make no apology for standing with our kind.” My mother rises to her full height. “I am a loyalist.”
“You are a drunk,” my father says irritably, “and stuck in the past.”
The vulnerability I saw in my mother disappears. “And you are a coward,” she bites back.
My father’s eyes close, and I feel his anger shift to something my mother does not see: rage.
“You are no more than a spineless sycophant,” my mother goes on. “You might as well cut off your own cock and present it to—”
My father strikes, slapping my mother across the face so hard she stumbles to the ground. When she looks up, her eyes are wide.
“Phorcys.”
Already, she’s scuttling away from him like a crab. Already, I know it is too late.
My father stalks toward her, his face stony.
“Phorcys, I’m sorry. Please. Please, I didn’t mean—” She tries to stand, but the rest of her words are cut off as his fingers wrap around her throat and squeeze.
Stheno closes her eyes, Euryale bows her head and stares determinedly at her hands in her lap.
Only I watch as my father lifts my mother by her neck.
Her sandaled feet kick helplessly in the air.
Her wheezes grow more desperate as she claws at his hands, eyes bulging and turning golden, but my father remains impassive.
His ancient gaze is cool. White-hot anger sears my insides, and not for the first time, I imagine what it would be like if I had a fraction of my father’s power, if I could hurt him the way he has hurt my mother so many times.
Not for the first time, I remember that here I am still helpless.
“Medusa will go to Athena’s temple,” my father says quietly. “Not because she has ordered it, but because I order it.” He brings their faces close. “You will not question me again. Do I make myself clear?”
“I understand,” my mother rasps. “Please, forgive me, my love.”
My father gives her one more contemptuous look before dropping her. She collapses in an inelegant heap on the ground, and he storms out of the hall, not looking back once.
My sisters and I stay seated at the dinner table, waiting for our mother to rise.
She does not. She only pulls her knees to her chest and stares off into the distance.
I do not know how long it is before she begins to cry, but when she does, it is an ugly, broken sound.
It nails me to my chair, renders me immobile.
Someone touches my arm, and I look up to find both my sisters standing over me. Their expressions are solemn, guarded.
“Come, Meddy.” Stheno’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle as she puts a hand on my shoulder. She is careful to avoid looking at our mother. “It’s time for bed.”
I do not think to argue. Without a word, I stand, and the three of us leave the dining hall together, our mother’s sobs fading into the night.
Perhaps, in my heart of hearts, I already know my mother will come to my bedchamber that night.
In bed, I lie on my side, eyes open and waiting.
I do not move when I hear the soft creak of my door opening or the pad of her footsteps.
My bed gives slightly as she settles onto its edge, and for a few seconds, neither of us speaks.
I take in the scent of her—the scent of grapeseed oil, wine, and myrrh.
Beneath those, I detect others. My mother smells of damp earth after rain, of fresh hyacinth.
I imagine her barefoot in her gardens with her curly hair unbraided, her face turned moonward so that her dark brown skin is bathed in silver light.
My thoughts are interrupted when she speaks.
“You were my most difficult pregnancy,” she says softly.
“All the time I carried you, I was so sick, I could barely eat. When it was, at last, time for your birth, my midwives told me you were trapped inside me. They suggested cutting you out of my womb, but I wouldn’t let them.
I told them you’d come in your own time, when you were ready.