Chapter XXIX
XXIX
I don’t know what drives me to run back to the gardens.
Perhaps it’s because they have always been my favorite place on the island, the place I’ve felt safest. Perhaps it’s because the air inside the great hall was stifling, and out here I feel I can breathe again.
I run until the soles of my feet ache, until my vision is spotty and I’m gasping for breath.
Then I duck into the thick, low-hanging leaves of a willow tree.
I curl up at the tree’s base and try to keep still.
Eventually, the sun rises, but I can’t bring myself to move.
The adrenaline that coursed through my veins, keeping me on high alert, begins to fade, and in its place, a fatigue like I’ve never known sets in.
I tilt my head back, easing against the trunk of the tree.
Then there’s a sharp hiss and stinging pain on my neck.
I touch two fingers to it, then see bright red blood.
Slowly, I understand what’s happened. When I leaned back, I inadvertently touched one of the snakes, so it bit me.
The bite is shallow, but it riddles me with a new panic.
I have not drunk water, I have not eaten, and I have not slept.
I don’t know how much longer I can stay upright.
A sharp hunger pang twists my stomach. Some bitter part of me wonders if this is what Athena intended, if what she’s really done is sentence me to a slow, painful death.
I think of what Theo would do, and then another kind of pain rips through my body.
Theo is gone.
I cry for an hour, then another, but the grief eventually consumes me, so that I have nothing left to give.
I remember the last look I saw on Theo’s face, the way he called out my name and promised that everything would be all right.
He was so sure he could fix it, he really believed himself strong enough to undo the work of gods.
He was so wrong.
A sound pulls me from my thoughts, and despite my fatigue, my senses are immediately on alert again as I hear approaching footsteps. I see shadowy figures through the willow tree’s leaves, and I brace myself, closing my eyes. There’s a pause.
“Meddy?”
The relief I feel at the sound of my sister’s voice is at once replaced by terror.
“Don’t come any closer!” I flinch at the sound of my own voice; it’s grown raspy and dry from thirst and crying.
“Meddy.” It’s Euryale’s voice. “It’s all right. It’s us.”
My eyes are still closed, but I hear a second set of footsteps, then the sound of the willow’s branches being parted. I squeeze my eyes tighter. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Meddy.” Stheno sounds more like herself now—annoyed, imperious. “Open your eyes.”
Perhaps it is the directness of the words, perhaps it is the utter lack of fear in my sister’s voice. Slowly, I crack open one eye, then another, careful to keep my gaze trained on the ground. Both my sisters are standing before me, their brown feet bare and unadorned.
“It’s all right,” says Euryale. “You can look at us.”
My gaze lifts slowly, from her feet to her dress. I am at her shoulders when a gasp escapes me.
Stheno and Euryale have changed.
My sisters’ faces remain largely the same—youthful, lovely. But their locs are all gone; in their place, black snakes writhe and twist through the air. Our gazes meet, and I realize my sisters’ eyes have changed, too. They’re yellow, with slitted pupils.
“Stheno. Euryale…” I can only stare. “What happened?”
They lower themselves to the ground so that we are all sitting in a small circle under the cover of the willow. In spite of everything, I still envy the graceful way they move. There’s a beat of silence, then Euryale speaks.
“After you left the feast, there was, as you might expect, quite a bit of commotion,” she says. “No one really knew what to do next. Everyone just sort of stood around looking at each other. Then Stheno chose to address Athena using some rather colorful language—”
“I called her a hateful bitch,” says Stheno flatly.
I go cold. “You didn’t.”
“Of course, Athena didn’t take kindly to that,” Euryale continues. “So she gave Stheno the same curse she gave to you. It was all deeply distressing, and I cried out, so…she cursed me, too.” She gives me a weak smile. “It was probably for the best, really. You know I never liked being left out.”
The weight of her words sinks in. Athena didn’t curse just me, she cursed my sisters, too. I didn’t think I had any tears left, but new ones fall as I look at them.
“What happened to Mama?” I ask. “And Father?”
“They fled,” says Stheno. She speaks matter-of-factly, without any trace of emotion. “We have no idea where they are, but my best guess is that they’re in hiding.”
It’s worse than anything I could have imagined. In a single night, the family I knew is gone. And it’s my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“No more of that.” Stheno shakes her head. “Eury and I are fine. We’re just glad we found you. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“We wanted to talk to you about what happened,” Euryale adds.
I avoid their gazes. “You were there,” I whisper. “You saw what happened.”
Stheno’s finger catches the point of my chin and gently tilts my head so that I’m looking at her again. “Not what happened in the hall,” she says.
“We want to know what happened before.” There’s no trace of teasing in Euryale’s voice anymore.
My heart seizes. I’ve been so wrapped up in fear, in fatigue, in grief, that I haven’t allowed myself to remember what happened in the garden.
Now it all comes back to me in a rush. I see Poseidon’s face, hear his grunts and moans, smell the sea-salt sweat of him as he ruts over me.
New tears burn in my eyes, but they’re angry ones now.
“When did this all start?” asks Stheno.
Slowly, I tell my sisters everything. I tell them about the boy I met in Athens who knew exactly where to find me in the market and exactly where to find the owl I was looking for.
I tell them about the night Poseidon rescued me, then about the necklace he also conveniently found and used as an excuse to see me again.
The more I speak, the more clearly I see it all. The more I talk, the worse I feel.
“He told me that his marriage to the queen was arranged and that she never loved him,” I say. “I believed him.”
“That isn’t true,” says Stheno. “Nereus didn’t arrange Poseidon and Amphitrite’s marriage, Poseidon demanded it.”
“Mother told us about it, once,” Euryale adds.
“Poseidon found Amphitrite beautiful, but she did not feel the same way. He chased her across the sea until finally she was convinced to marry him. Of course, once she learned to love him, his attention waned. He has never been faithful to her. It’s why she hates him so. ”
I remember what Theo once said to me, the rumors he told me he’d heard about Poseidon that I’d so easily disregarded. I shake my head, feeling sick.
“It’s all so obvious now,” I whisper. “There were all the signs in the world, but I didn’t see them because I didn’t want to.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
“No,” says Stheno. “Not stupid.”
“Meddy, I need you to understand something,” says Euryale.
“What Poseidon did? It wasn’t random. He orchestrated every encounter.
He knew exactly what strings to pull, what words to say, because he is old and you are young, and because he knew he could take advantage of you. That is not your fault.”
I see it all like pieces from a broken vase then, coming together with terrible satisfaction.
I realize Euryale is right. Everything Poseidon did was deliberate.
He methodically earned my trust, made me feel as though I was truly special to him.
He lured me farther and farther away from the shore and into his depths until my toes couldn’t touch the bottom.
And then he let me drown.
“We need to know,” says Stheno. “Did he lie with you last night?”
A few seconds pass before I can form a single word. “Yes.”
“Did you want him to?” Euryale asks. “If you did, we won’t judge you. We just need to know.”
Another pause. “I don’t know,” I say finally.
“At first…I thought I wanted him to. I thought he truly cared for me, but then…” I remember the owl’s eyes blinking at me in the darkness.
“I said, ‘Wait.’ I told him I couldn’t, because of my priestess vows, but he…
” I can’t make myself relive that part, and I fall into silence.
I wait for Stheno to say something, but she does not. Seconds pass before she takes my hands in hers.
“It doesn’t matter that you might have wanted to at first,” she says. “You can change your mind at any time.”
“But…” I stare at our joined hands. “I didn’t say no. I didn’t—”
“You are thousands of years younger than him.” Euryale’s voice sharpens so suddenly I flinch against it. “And you’d been drinking Olympian wine. Both those things are cause enough to make what he did wrong.”
It takes a moment for me to register that the emotion bubbling up within me is relief, vindication. Someone believes me. In a stronger voice, I say, “He was lying about everything. The way he made it sound…he twisted it all. I was telling the truth.”
Stheno’s expression hardens, while Euryale’s becomes a mask.
“I’m afraid the truth doesn’t matter, Meddy,” says Stheno.
I frown, trying to hide my hurt. “What do you—?”
“I warned you that men with power are always the first to be believed,” she says.
“You should have listened. In these situations, it isn’t the truth that holds weight.
What matters is power and those who wield it, because they’re the ones who get to decide what’s true and what’s a lie.
” She nods at me. “You are the mortal daughter of two lowly, now-disgraced sea gods. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you where you stand in the hierarchy of things. ”
The words don’t hurt the way they might have coming from someone else. I know my sister well enough to recognize that behind their harshness, there is love.
“Your voice and your truth will never hold weight unless you also learn to hold power,” says Euryale.
“But I don’t know how to be powerful,” I say in a small voice.
Stheno juts her chin, looking down her nose at me, and in that moment, she looks like a queen. “I’ll tell you this: Power is not given. It is taken.”
I open my mouth to ask Stheno what that means when one of the snakes atop her head suddenly begins to hiss. I watch with horror as its mouth opens, revealing a forked black tongue and thorn-sharp teeth. It weaves and spits against my sister’s cheek, and I recognize the glint in its eye.
“Stheno, it’s going to—”
The snake makes to strike at my sister, but Stheno is impossibly quicker.
In one fell swoop, she snatches the creature by its neck and pulls it free from her head.
Only her slight flinch betrays any discomfort, but in her hands, she now holds the snake aloft.
I gasp softly. It is limp in her grasp, dead.
Stheno regards it with a faint look of annoyance before throwing it to the ground.
I notice that the other snakes coiling and writhing about her head are more subdued now.
They do not hiss anymore. She meets my gaze and nods.
“Your body is yours,” she says. “You control it, all of it, including your eyes. You don’t have to turn anyone to stone unless you will it. You can learn to control it.” A hint of sympathy touches her face. “I am sorry, about Theo.”
The grief returns to me at once, fresh and aching.
“We moved him to a part of the gardens he liked,” Euryale adds. “If you wish to see him.”
My thoughts are interrupted as a now-familiar hiss sounds just behind my ear. I shudder as the snakes atop my head begin to move around one another, their scales gliding along the back of my neck uncomfortably, as if daring me to object. Stheno leans in and speaks in a low voice.
“They will not respect you unless you make them.”
She and Euryale rise, brushing off the fronts of their tunics.
“We’ll be back inside, when you’re ready,” says Euryale.
They leave the way they came, pushing back the rippling branches of the willow tree to leave me alone with the snakes on my head and their hissing.
After a few minutes, I slowly stand, carefully, so as not to disturb them.
The muscles in my legs spasm and ache from disuse, but I ignore the discomfort as I make myself walk forward, one step after the other, and then I’ve left the canopy of the willow tree, too.
I let my feet carry me of their own volition, unsure of where I’m going until I am nearly there.
Early morning sunlight dapples the small lawn, and I freeze.
In its center is Theo.
His statue is looking ahead so that, if I squint, I can almost imagine he is standing there waiting for me, like always. My throat tightens, and I choke on a sob.
“I’m sorry.” He can’t hear me, I know that, but I still feel the need to say the words aloud. “I’m so sorry.”
My fingers creep up my neck, then latch onto the shell necklace.
I don’t know what drives me to do it, but I yank the thing free from my neck and kneel at Theo’s feet.
I don’t truly realize what I’m doing until I’ve nearly finished digging the tiny hole in the dirt before his statue.
I place the necklace into it and gently push dirt over it until it’s gone.
Fresh tears sting my eyes. As I cry for Theo, I realize I’m also crying for the life I had before last night.
I think of all the dreams I’d collected, nurtured, then lost. I feel as though some part of me died with Theo, gone forever, like he is.
I paw a lone tear from my cheek and stare up at the morning sun.
A snake hisses in my ear a second time, and I do not hesitate.
I grasp its head and pull. Searing pain lances through my skull as I yank it out of my head.
I imagine it would feel the same as ripping a loc from my own scalp, but I ignore the pain as I stare at the snake in my hand.
It is dead, but I speak so that the others will hear me.
“You are with me, or you are against me.”
The snakes’ hissing subsides immediately, and they come to rest at my shoulders. They aren’t my old locs—they never will be—but they are still long and, I decide in that moment, beautiful, just in a different way. I rise and leave the gardens without looking back.
The snakes do not bite me ever again.