by Laura Gill
“The men did as you ordered, my lord. I made inquiries.” Wordeia stood behind him, in the corridor. “But they swear that, once in the mountains, they encountered a monstrous black wolf that attacked them and tore the throat from one, and injured the others.” She kept a healthy distance, as if she feared to breathe the same air. “And then an eagle made off with the child. How he returned here, I do not—”
“Lying bitch.” Spittle flew from the king’s lips with each syllable. “She must have had help. Those infernal Women of the Mountain, those busy sluts. If they meddled...”
“No, my lord, no.” Wordeia’s reply spanned such depths of terror that I wondered what demon must have possessed my father to make her fear him so. “Zeus. The girl.” She meant me, without acknowledging my existence or uttering my name. “She spoke of Father Zeus, of the oak, the wolf, the eagle.”
In the next fraction of a second, he backhanded her so hard that the lamp flew from her grasp and clattered against the floor, where the oil sputtered. Her fingers, touching her mouth, came away bloody; he had split her lip. “You speak blasphemy, woman!” he barked.
“She speaks truth!” I did not know why I felt compelled to defend my aunt when she had not defended me or my baby, or even tried to help us escape; the utterance left my mouth before I had considered the consequences.
Now, Acrisius focused on me, raking me up and down with feverishly dark eyes. His hand, still raised, loomed threateningly, but just as I flinched, just as the blow started to fall, my son, curious about Acrisius, squealed and waved his pudgy arms at him. I had hoped Eurymedon might attract his grandfather’s attention, charm him, beguile him into acceptance, but now was not the time. Acrisius would raise his hand to anything or anyone who crossed him. Woman or the infant child he had already ordered destroyed, it hardly mattered.
Except that the blow he intended for me never fell. A glimmer of superstitious fear replaced the rabid anger animating his eyes. Slowly, he lowered his hand, stepped away from me, and exited the room. Wordeia spared me a terrified glance before hastening after him. A guard closed the door.
That night, I alternated between fitful rest and watchfulness, certain that something was about to happen without knowing—or necessarily wanting to discover—what. Acrisius was afraid. Of offending Zeus? Of a long-ago oracle? What crime could he have committed that the gods would punish him with such a pronouncement? I wracked my brain without seeing the point. Surely he had priests and other learned men to untangle for him the byzantine ways of the immortal gods.
A half dozen guards arrived just before sunrise. Not for Eurymedon alone, as I had feared and anticipated, but for me as well. They hustled us downstairs to the outer court. There, stood an enclosed conveyance such as noblewomen used when traveling. “In you go, girl,” the guard captain ordered.
I hesitated. “Where are you taking us?”
“That’s not for you to ask.” He made a shooing motion, by which he meant that I was to be an obedient girl and get inside.
Still, I did not move. “Not until you tell me where we’re going.”
“No place you’re going to like. Now move, girl, unless you want to be manhandled.” His hand shoved the small of my back.
Remembering yesterday’s scuffle and how poorly I had fared, I climbed inside with Eurymedon. Obviously the king intended to do away with us together, since he could not expose Eurymedon alone. Which meant we must be headed into the wilderness, where yesterday the wolf had attacked and the eagle had come to the rescue. Would the wolf return? I doubted there was an eagle big enough to carry me, or that the god had any intention of rescuing me; the bruises and scabbed-over cuts from yesterday morning, which no kindly immortal had prevented, served as evidence enough.
If I could somehow steal Eurymedon away from the men and escape into the wilderness, I had sufficient woodcraft to probably keep us sheltered and fed for months. But Acrisius would send men to hunt us down, and I did not know who among the herdsmen I could trust. Could I somehow find my way back to the Mountain?
We started moving. A piece of wood had been nailed over the carriage’s window, leaving me blind to the outside. I held onto the rough wooden seat with one hand and onto Eurymedon with the other as the carriage jounced over the uneven pavement, then tilted and swayed as we descended from the Larissa. I heard the sounds of the marketplace coming to life, the guards shouting to clear a path, then everything receding into the distance.
My head ached from the cart’s jouncing coupled with insufficient sleep. Eurymedon gripped my forefinger in his tiny fist. What a powerful grasp he might grow into, if the Fates allowed him to become a man. “No,” I murmured. “Whatever awaits us out there, I don’t think it’s any good.”
Then, without warning, we stopped, and everything became an unbearable limbo of waiting. I heard the crunch of hobnailed soles on wet gravel, the sound growing closer. The door opened, and the gray-bearded captain peered in. “Time to come out, girl. You and the baby.” He offered a sunburned hand to steady my descent, as well as some unasked-for advice. “Don’t be difficult. You see all the men?”
A stiff, briny breeze whipped my face and hair, and plastered my cloak against my body. Scrub land. Seagulls congregating in the distance, daylight heralding the start of their mewling racket. We had stopped below a headland obscuring a hazy view of Tiryns. Here, the Mistress of the Winds took delight in smothering the sea grasses tufting the sand dunes. In addition to the half-dozen guards, I counted twelve men helmeted in bronze and boar-tusk, standing at attention while the Mistress ruffled their cloaks and horsehair crests.
“So many for one woman and her child?” I commented ruefully. My intended sarcasm stuck in my throat, however. The number and caliber of well-armed warriors could mean only one thing: that Acrisius was present.
Searching, my gaze lit on an elaborately painted chariot, but the king was not there. I caught a glimpse of purple farther on. Hands clasped behind his back, Acrisius contemplated the sea. He made a solitary image.
“This way.” With a shove, the captain urged me along. Wet gravel crunched under my feet as we followed the king’s steps to a rocky terrace. I tightened my hold on Eurymedon. Why here, why the sea? Poseidon’s anger churned the sea into a froth of precarious, white-capped waves that trammeled the rocks below.
Between the king and me sat an object of exquisite craftsmanship. An open chest, its outer panels painted all over with scenes of priestesses celebrating sacred rites; it took me a moment to recognize my mother’s dower chest, an object I had not seen in more than a decade and had assumed had gone into the tomb with her. But what was it doing there, standing beside the rough sea, loaded inside with cushions and coverlets?
I glanced from the chest to the stern, brooding king, then out to the heaving surf of the gulf of Argolis, and then back again to the chest. All the while, a terrible, knowing dread built inside me. “Oh, no,” I croaked. “No.”
Clutching Eurymedon fast, I wrenched away from the captain and tried to flee. Arms seized me straightaway. Someone took Eurymedon, saying, “You’ll drop him, girl,” and I screamed and twisted, and laughed hysterically. How ridiculous that they cared what happened to my baby when they almost certainly knew what the king intended!
The captain shook me. “Enough! You’ll injure yourself.” And that, too, struck me as absurd, considering the living death awaiting me.
A moment’s silence ensued. Then Acrisius, who had been watching the scene with dispassionate disdain, stepped forward. Thrusting a finger toward the chest, he made his dire pronouncement: “Put them in.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Horrified, I vainly struggled against the men who wrestled me into the chest. Someone shoved a squalling Eurymedon into my arms. Disbelief took hold as the heavy lid closed over my head. I heard the pins slide into place, sealing me and my child in total blackness. We would suffocate. We would starve to death. I pounded on the underside of the lid with the heel of my hand. “Let me out! Let me
out!”
The chest abruptly tilted. Muffled grunts from without. What was taking place now? Surely not the thing I imagined, not the short journey to the edge, the sickening drop, the possibility of being dashed against the rocks. Please, Goddess, not that. I clutched Eurymedon, tucked my knees up to my chest, and wrapped myself around his small body.
Some force suddenly smashed me against the lid. Time froze. My mind worked just enough to recognize that we were in freefall. I could not breathe. I could not do anything but anticipate smashing against the rocks, and try to shield Eurymedon with my body.
A heartbeat later, my body slammed back against the cushions. The impact recoiled through my spine and left me breathless. Everything felt broken. It even hurt to breathe. Nausea rolled over me. Eurymedon made no sound. Goddess, no. My lungs heaved for air, and got almost none. Pain stabbed through every nerve.
And then, to my utter astonishment, my agony vanished. I could breathe again, and there was a brilliant blue sky overhead, and the smell of lilies and wild roses. Cushions soft as clouds banished the memory of broken bones.
A familiar, happy gurgle made me sit upright. “Eurymedon!”
My son clutched at honeybees hovering over a basket of woven gold. I swept him into my arms, smelled his skin, his hair, and marveled at the warmth and life of him. For one horrifying instant in the darkness, the last moment I could remember, I believed him broken as well.
I started to nurse him, but for some reason he did not want to suckle.
“The bees have fed him nectar.”
A woman’s voice startled me. She was a vision in flowing white and gold. Jewels winked among immaculate dark curls. Her face was smooth, ageless, and pale but for a mouth as lush and scarlet as pomegranates.
“Lady,” I gasped.
She extended an elegant hand. “Join me by the terrace, Danaë. Bring Eurymedon. It is such a beautiful afternoon.”
So firmly did the goddess—for she could only be an immortal—hold me in her spell that I had reached her side before it occurred to me that she had addressed me by my dead name. “Lady, I am Myrtale.”
Her smile was cool, like the waters of a sacred spring. “Myrtale belongs to the Women of the Mountain, and your time among them is done.” I followed her gaze from the terrace to the blue sea a thousand feet below. Only an immortal’s colossal hand could have scooped out the immense bay with its sheer cliffs. I thought then of the sea-lashed rocks Acrisius had been contemplating, of the fall through the air, and the impact...
“Oh, no, you should not think about that for a while.” The goddess dismissed the notion with a cursory wave. “Is this place not spectacular? I liked it better when it was green and habitable, before Poseidon destroyed it, but that is his nature. The Great Bull, the Earth-Shaker. Men ruin what they cannot have. What you see now is the future, a land of sheer cliffs and spectacular vistas.”
Slowly, languorously, she savored the view, before addressing me again. “They mean well, the Women of the Mountain, but they have misled you. You should not think of Danaë as dead, only hibernating. One day you may have cause to reclaim her.”
“Mistress?” She looked nothing like the dark and forbidding goddess-pillar of the cave sanctuary, nothing like the xoanon of Potnia Theron, and nothing at all like the primitive Mistress of the House. Had Phileia ever seen her thus?
“Phileia has no need to converse with the Queen of Heaven,” the goddess answered. Hera. The consort of Zeus. I held my breath. Clouds suddenly swallowed the bright sunlight, and the thousand-foot heights became more ominous than breathtaking. Hera despised her lord’s many dalliances, persecuting them.
I suppressed that thought, hoping she had not sensed it, but her tinkling laugh informed me otherwise. “Oh, child, I bear you no particular ill will. If I did, you would not be here right now.” An enigmatic smile curved her lips. “Before I heal your hurts and return you to the mortal world, remember these two things. Firstly, the Women of the Mountain have become embattled and afraid in their high places, and because of that they have misled you.”
Where I hoped she might elaborate, Hera instead acknowledged Eurymedon with a smile. He gurgled, his blue eyes dancing as he waved his fist at her. “As for the other matter,” she said, her gaze remaining on my son. “Exercise caution in the world of men, Danaë—or whatever you choose to call yourself from now on. Do not give your trust lightly.” The warning pierced me so I forgot to breathe. “While I cannot perceive everything that the Fates weave in secret, I have seen enough of your thread and your son’s to understand that neither one of you is safe from the manifold dangers that still threaten.”
PART FOUR
SERIPHOS
PART FOUR
SERIPHOS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
One moment, I was surveying the caldera from the high terrace, the next gasping for breath and shielding my eyes from the blinding sun. I heard the ebb and crash of the surf, and, over the sound of unfamiliar voices, my son bawling. I reached for him, but where Eurymedon had lain there was only an impression of his warmth.
A man’s voice exclaimed, “She’s breathing!” Other voices, in the background, expressed surprise.
A solid arm went around my shoulders, another hooked behind my knees, and I was suddenly airborne, away from the chest. I instinctively flung my arms around his neck. Pebbly sand crunched under his every footfall.
“Put her on my bed, Diktys.” A woman spoke. “Careful in the doorway.” I heard the scrape of sandals on a stone threshold in the same heartbeat that I sensed the loss of sunlight, and the closing-in of shadows. The smell of herbs and raw fish impregnated the air. Tentatively, I cracked my eyelids open, blinked away tears, and tried to let my eyes adjust. A gray-haired woman thrust her lined face into mine, squinting at me even as I squinted at her. “Is anything broken?” she asked. “Does she need dry clothes?”
“She’s dry, and nothing’s broken that I can tell, but you ought to look at her.” The man called Diktys carefully set me down on a straw mattress before prying my arms from his neck. “There you are. Safe.” His clear, baritone voice conveyed a sense of caring as reassuring as a mother’s.
An uncomfortable emptiness enveloped me, alerting me again to the absence of my son. I started. “Eurymedon?”
Diktys restrained me with a sturdy brown arm. “He’s safe with Huamia and Philagra. They’re neighbors.”
The old woman chimed in as she drew near, “You’re in no condition to look after him right now. But rest here a while.” As if to emphasize her point, she brought a blanket and draped it around my shoulders. “He’ll be well looked-after by those two.” She glanced quickly at Diktys. “He’s not injured, either, is he?”
“Is he? I must see him!” My hands shook. I felt weak and breathless, dazed under a jumble of recollections, but that did not affect my maternal determination.
“You must rest,” Diktys said firmly. “You and your baby weren’t breathing when we found you.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand it. But for the mercy of the immortal gods, you should be dead.”
Not breathing. Airtight. Dead. A complete recollection of the horror struck me hard. Moaning, I leaned down to muffle my scream in the pallet’s coarse blankets; straw pricked my face through the threadbare fabric. Suffocated. Eurymedon and I had suffocated in the blackness. We had been broken by the fall. We had died, and though dark-winged Thanatos had not come to salvage our souls for dread Hades, that did not make our surviving any less terrible.
“Diktys! Mind what you say.” The straw shifted. Then the old woman was there to stroke my disheveled hair and murmur endearments. “You’re both safe now. Don’t cry—ssh! Rest and regain your strength. You and your child will be all right.”
I hiccupped into the rough pillow, while someone alternately thumped and stroked my back. Someone else brought water to ease the hiccups. I drank, but had not the strength to do more except lie numb and stare at the ceiling.
Then the man called Dikty
s broke the spell by speaking. “I want to know who would do so monstrous a thing to a young woman and child.”
Was he speaking to me? His expectant air told me that he wanted answers that I was not prepared to give. Hera’s advice remained clear in my mind where everything else was scrambled. My choices affected my safety and Eurymedon’s.
The old woman intervened. “She certainly can’t tell you now. Look at her! Let her eat something and rest, as befits a guest, and then you can ask your questions.” Her fingers kept moving rhythmically, caressing my scalp and temples, and I silently gave thanks to Hera to have found such an ally. I needed the time.
Whatever Diktys might have said, an interruption from without forestalled him. An older man’s gruff voice inquired, “What’re we to do with the chest?”
Diktys cleared his throat. “Put it under the dry dock and cover it. We’ll decide what to do with it later. But bring the bedding here.”
He left the house, because when I finally uncovered my eyes and cautiously sat up to survey my surroundings, he was no longer there. Only the old woman remained. I glimpsed her through the doorway, crouching by the hearth to stir something in a cauldron. My belly growled with hunger. How long had it been since I had eaten?
My initial panic and confusion were gone. I could begin to think ahead now. How to explain my predicament to my rescuers? More important, who were they, and where was I? “What is this place?” I asked cautiously.
Glancing up, she acknowledged my question by coming over to the doorway. “Why aren’t you resting?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Ah, then, are you hungry?” I nodded. She hustled me over to the hearth and bade me take a footstool; she even covered my knees with a soft fleece. I started to wonder whether I would have to repeat the question, when she answered, “This is Pelargos.”
