by Ann Halam
“You’re very sure you can do it, Perseus. How are you so sure?”
“I’m not. I’m fatalistic.”
I watched the glow of moonrise in the east. The eighth-month moon was waning, and Andromeda was still with me. At Parga she must find a ship heading east. She must set out on her last journey, among strangers, all alone. I was awed by her courage. I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and that I wished we could stay here, poised between worlds. I wished time might stand still. We were sitting with our backs against the rope locker that shared the roof of the galley with us, holding hands. But you can hold someone’s hand, and feel that they are completely out of reach.
“Andromeda? Do you believe that your sacrifice will stop the earthquake?”
Silence, then she sighed. “You don’t know about human sacrifice, do you?”
“N-n-no.”
She let go of my hand, and drew her knees to her chin. “The priests always say the child sacrifice was effective, Perseus. They always say it was necessary and right, whatever happens. I don’t know what the Gods themselves think. I don’t know what the Gods really are, except they’re not what the priests tell us.”
“Papa Dicty says people get the Gods they deserve.”
“I don’t think the Gods are only in our minds. That wouldn’t make sense, would it, son of Zeus? It’s more as if, as if our minds are in the Gods. The Gods and our minds are made the same, and live in the same world?”
“That’s what I’ve thought. I’ve never worked it out in words, but that’s how the otherworld feels, you’re right. But then why …?”
Why go back to Haifa, when you know the damned priests are lying? I didn’t finish my question, but she started up, in a desperate, trapped movement. I saw her kneeling, fists clenched, her eyes gleaming in the moon glow and the starlight.
“Why go back? You really want to know? Because I don’t know if there’ll be an earthquake or not, but I know for certain that if I’m not chained to that rock, another girl will be.”
She caught her breath. I knew she hadn’t meant to say chained to the rock. She hadn’t told me that; she had spared me the details.
I was born to save you, I thought. There’s no other reason why I’m alive. And I felt, right then, with passion, that the Supernaturals knew it too.
“But that’s not all.” She wiped her eyes, with the side of her hand. “It’s not just that. It’s a mystery, Perseus. I can’t explain it, but I did see the God. And it’s strange, but I’m not worried about getting to Haifa in time. I feel I’m bound to be there, the same as you are bound to reach the Medusa’s lair. Maybe I’ll have a strange dream, like the day you met your father, and I’ll find myself at home again.” She stopped, and I thought she was surprised at hearing her own words. “I still dream of horses,” she murmured. “I’ve been seeing them in daylight, in the foam of the waves, since we’ve been on the Argo. Maybe they’re Ocean God’s sea horses, waiting to carry me away.”
The oars thumped. The stars looked down, with changeless bright eyes.
“Let’s try to sleep,” I said. “Put your head on my shoulder, and I’ll be your watchdog. I’ll keep those horses at bay.”
I lay awake and thought about being immortal. I must lose her one day, no matter what, the same as Castor and Polydeuces must lose each other. All I could do about that was pray to the Gods to have pity, and let me cross the Dark Water, the same as mortals do. Let me be with her on the unknown shore, even if I didn’t recognize her (I’d heard that the souls of the mortal dead forget everything). But I had something new to dread. White horses in the waves?
Andromeda was seeing things mortals shouldn’t see, because it drives them crazy.
It was this ship. It was getting to her. I was glad we’d be leaving it soon.
I avoided conversations with Jason, not because of the strangeness, but because he was so irritating. He was still convinced I longed to be an Argonaut, only I was too shy to admit it. He kept cornering me, and “confiding” in me about the great plan. Fantastic adventures distracted them, but they were basically heading for the Black Sea, the eastern end of the known world. I couldn’t resist asking what they planned to do when they got there. Pick up this overgrown rowboat and carry on, see if they came to another ocean? Or just turn around and head for the Pillars again, for a little more exercise?
“You don’t get it, god-bothered dude. The Argo is cutting-edge. When we do come back from this wild, rakehelly adventure, we’ll be famous. More famous than we are now, even. I’m going to found my own shipping line, take over the Middle Sea. I’ll have the capital for that. We’ll be bringing home a huge, undiscovered secret prize, the details of which we’re keeping to ourselves, so don’t bother asking.”
“I don’t know, Jason,” I said, shaking my head. “The secret undiscovered prizes I’ve seen you go after so far have not been secret to their actual owners. I think you’re just planning tonight hunt some unlucky Black Sea farmer’s big fat sheep.”
The captain of the Argo gave me a very suspicious look, and changed the subject. “Where d’you want to be let off, by the way? At the pilgrims’ port, or somewhere quiet? As you know, we don’t like ports. We’re too hot for them to handle.”
It was the fifth day. Two nights before we’d passed the cape of Kithera, southernmost landmark of the Achaean nations, and there we’d left the world I knew behind. We’d made one shore raid since, but that had told me nothing. It could have been the Mainland, or one of the northwest islands. We’d never had another chance to look at Jason’s charts, and probably wouldn’t have learned much from them: we weren’t master mariners. We were at his mercy, which I didn’t like at all. I suddenly wished I’d been more groveling.
“Somewhere quiet would be very good.”
“Right,” he said. “It won’t be long now.”
I told Andromeda what the captain had said, and we started cooking the noon meal. We had flat bread and meat down to a fine art, and there wasn’t much room in that hutch, so she went out to get some air while I finished up. Meat broiled and resting; a stack of flat bread ready to be fresh-grilled; a gravy with wild onion, garlic and cucumber (the twins and Atalanta had brought back the wild vegetables for me, from our last landfall). The Argonauts would hate the sauce, but I knew it would do them good.
I went to look for my girl, and found her on the foredeck with the captain. They were alone except for Heracles, who was staring doomily at the horizon, picking at the lion claws under his chin. Castor had told me he was depressed for a reason: his boyfriend had been left behind with some nymphs, or something. But he made me uncomfortable, no matter what his problem was. Beyond the churning of our oars, the waves were dark as unwatered wine.
“C’mon,” Jason was saying to Andromeda, “why not? If not me, who’s the lucky guy?”
She could look after herself. But I didn’t walk away.
“Well,” she said coolly. “If you really don’t know, let’s see if you can guess. Some people think he’s just a bruiser, and sometimes he plays up to that. But secretly he’s wise. Secretly he thinks, and I like that. He’s kind, and gentle, and he has a sense of humor. He’s tall, broad shouldered, not at all fleshy. He has chestnut hair that curls around his brow and at the nape of his neck in clusters, like ripe grapes. I think his skin must be pale in winter, but in summer it’s shades of copper and golden brown. His eyes are dark blue, his nose is straight, he has a cleft in his chin….”
“Aw, Perseus,” cried Jason, pretending to be amazed. “That baby? Trust me, Andromeda, forget the loser. Let’s drop him at Parga, and then—”
“I need to know about the meal,” I said loudly. “Are we serving at the benches? Or are they eating in shifts today?”
Andromeda turned and grinned at me wickedly. She knew I’d been listening.
“Good news. Captain Jason says we could be onshore this evening.”
She headed off. I stood and looked at Captain Jason.
He held up h
is hands in mock terror. “Hey, don’t hit me! What did I say?”
“Not that Andromeda cares, because she’s too far above you to even know you exist. But don’t ever, ever bother her again, you pig-nosed, spikey-haired …”
He leered, delighted to have got me going. “They’re all too far above us, my little son. Even if they’re willing as your babe. That’s why I’m married to the Argo, me.”
I should have hit him. It was a wasted opportunity.
Andromeda stayed at the rail for a moment when the two heroes had stalked off in different directions. White horses, somber-eyed, looked up at her. They were very close now, very real. She took a scrap of blue-and-chestnut weaving from the breast of her tunic, and cast it away, watched it fluttering down. Goodbye, Perseus, goodbye. What should have been the beginning is going to be the end. No use hanging on to hope …
Maybe Jason had known what he planned to do with us all along; or maybe I sealed our fate. Either way, the weather took a hand. The day had been clear and fine. Before sunset we were close to a rocky coastline, with mountains beyond: no sign of human habitation. Then an easterly wind got up, there was a sudden overcast and the sea began to heave in the blind swell that forebodes a storm. It was soon clear we couldn’t make landfall, and the Argo was in for a rough night. Rain started pelting. The steersman was under shelter, but we’d been driven off the roof. Everything moveable in the galley was stowed. We crawled under the bolted-down table with our bundles of possessions, to sit it out. Luckily, neither of us was prone to seasickness. Waves were smacking us in the face; it was pitch dark. We could only hope the rowers had managed to turn the Argo‘s head, back out to the safety of the open sea.
The door burst open. The Argonauts pulled us out. We thought the ship was foundering, but we were ready for that. I had my supernatural gear strapped to my back; Andromeda had her bundle tied around her waist…. There was light, splashing over us from the lantern Jason was holding. I had never seen such waves. I’d thought old Yiannis was gibbering when he said fifty man heights above the mast. Now I knew, that’s what it felt like.
“You two,” yelled Jason. “You get off here.”
“What?” I screamed.
“This storm. It’s a little love tap from my lady Hera, blessed be her name. I better do what she wants. But I’m giving you a dinghy. Oars, everything, because that’s the kind of guy I am. You should have no problem, son of Zeus!”
We were chucked over the side, and a boat the size of a bathtub was chucked after us. I heard the Argonauts cheering as we managed to scramble into it, in a lull between squalls. Then the storm came back with fury, and the Argo vanished, as if she had never been. The world was nothing but roaring, boiling darkness and cold masses of salt water, pounding on us, blow after blow. We could hear waves breaking on rock, a terrifying sound, but we could see nothing. We’d been thrown into the sea, in a wooden box. The thing I couldn’t possibly remember had happened, and I did remember. Choking dark closed over me, I felt my Moumi’s heart beating, I heard the nails being hammered down. And deeper than the crash of breakers, another noise, a sucking, whirling, groaning roar, the sound of death itself.
He was standing on a spit of gray rock. I was Perseus; he was in two places. In front of him was the hollow among naked boulders where the old creatures crouched together. They were eating. Their meal would have been a cannibal feast—if they had been human. They were the Gray Sisters…. Limbs and bones, skulls and ribs lay about them, some stripped bare, some clotted with white water-logged meat. On one side of the spit, a black roiling abyss. On the other, a fang of stone. I was in the other world, far deeper in than I’d been when I rowed out to The Magnificent Escape. It was an impossible gray land, where there should have been tossing sea, but it was real, absolutely real: there was nothing else. And I was lost, I was split into two, maybe the other me was the son of Zeus but I didn’t feel powerful. All I knew was that I had to get past the Gray Sisters. I didn’t remember how I was supposed to do it, but I remembered a little boy, a little boy talking to his Moumi about the strange creatures he often met. The people who talked to him, the people nobody else could see …
I did not remember how he’d come here, but I remembered about the eye and the tooth. I crawled, and the cold gray rock slithered from under my feet and hands. I was crawling on the waves; they tipped up and threw me back. He just crawled again. The Graeae could smell me. They peered around, sniffing hard. They had black eyeless sockets under wild white hair. I kept out of sight of the one eye. I remembered my mother telling me to be polite…. He said, What about the goaty ones, they’re rude. Moumi said, Then be a little rude to them. True politeness is making people feel at ease with you, however strange they seem. Be natural, Perseus. The Graeae were as different from the naiad of the goat-hollow spring as death is different from an opening flower. But they were natural creatures, just the same. He crawled through the bones and took my place.
“Pass the tooth …,” I croaked.
The Sister across from him was mumbling on a drowned child’s hand. She gulped it, and passed the tooth. I reached for a hunk of pale, dripping flesh.
Andromeda crouched in the bow of the tiny dinghy, gripping an oar with both hands. She’d lost the other. On one side the whirlpool, on the other the fanged rocks. She dared not look anywhere but straight ahead. Think, she told herself. She had tried this only once before. The bathing inlet, a sunny day, Palikari showing her how to use one oar. Push the water back in one direction, the boat will go forward in the opposite direction, same line. Now the other side. You’re getting it, Kore. Back on the left, back on the right, evenly, evenly now; and that makes straight on. You’ve got it, Kore. She pictured it in her head, lines and forces—that helped. Push back. Boat goes forward …
She dared not look behind her. She knew that Perseus was there, curled in a ball, seas crashing over him. He was gone, he was in another place, he was having a strange dream. Wherever he is, she thought, he’ll stand by me.
“Perseus? Perseus? Can you hear me? Can you guide me? I daren’t look on either side, have to keep looking ahead….”
“The eye.”
What? Oh! He’s right, I’m too close to the whirlpool! “The tooth.”
Too close to the fang of rock …
It was lucky she’d lost the second oar; she could not have handled two. She could do this, with monumental concentration. The cold waves that slapped her, the ache in her hands and arms and shoulders would get to be unbearable. But not yet. The wooden shell bounced through the huge waves; somehow, it was never swamped. Keep looking ahead, push back the water, boat goes forward: left side, right side, eye side, tooth side. We are getting there, we really are. If there’s a sheltered beach beyond these rocks, we’ll live.
Andromeda caught a mouthful of seawater. She choked and coughed, clutching her precious oar. The veil of spume parted. For a moment she saw, in moonlight, what lay beyond the reefs. The cliffs, black and gleaming, rising straight from the white shock of the waves. She looked back, over her shoulder. Perseus was staring at her, his mouth an O of horror, his eyes blind with visions. “The eye!” he croaked. “The eye!”
Stand by me, she thought, and deliberately plunged her oar.
The eye
And again,
The eye
And again,
The eye
One more stroke. The clawing fingers of that black maw caught the dinghy, and flung it inward. Andromeda’s oar was ripped out of her hands. She threw herself onto the bottom boards, grabbed hold of Perseus; and the whirlpool swallowed them.
* * *
Serifos was untouched by the storm that had swooped on the Ionian Coast, six hundred long miles away by the sea roads. Danae could not hear the wind that gave Jason cause to toss his passengers overboard. She was kept awake by anxieties closer to home. Hard to believe the children had been gone such a short while … She stood in the kitchen yard with the people who’d taken shelter at Dicty’s, a pitchfor
k in her hands—hoping there’d be no more trouble tonight, and thinking of the white linen embroidered with cornflowers and wheat ears, inscribed The Queen of Summer. The story of the Summer Queen tells how the child of the Goddess of Harvest, Dimitra, was kidnapped by Winter, the king of the dead. But the blossoming girl was found again; she came back to her mother. Spring always returns….
Did they tell that story in Haifa? Danae had never had a chance to ask Andromeda. Probably they did, because it was as old and true as the “Dark Water” song. It belonged to no nation, although Danae had learned it with the Achaean names, in the Greek language, when she was a child.
You gave me yourself, Kore. You promised to return.
She did not pray to Zeus. She would never pray to Perseus’s father. She prayed to his wife, to Hera the Protectoress. Anthe thought the Achaean Goddess was nothing but a vindictive shrew, but Danae knew better. Maybe she bargained, maybe she just pleaded. You know I never harmed you willingly, great lady. Be just. Have pity on my children, my dear boy and my dear girl. Let them live.
I lost the otherworld horror of the Gray Sisters. I was back with Andromeda, and the whirlpool had us. “Hang on,” I screamed, and she clung to me while I struggled to keep my arms and legs thrust against the sides. There was a weight on my back, dragging me outward, terrifyingly strong. If I let go, or if one flimsy plank burst, we were dead, instantly dead. We were thrown around like a child’s toy boat in a yelling black downspout, flung from rock to rock, around and around, falling, falling….
Then the dinghy was right side up again; the tumult faded and I was breathing air. That’s all I knew, until I felt the bottom of the boat bumping against something, gently, gently. There was a grating sound, familiar but uncanny. We separated, and got to our knees. The darkness seemed complete, but I had a feeling of great space above us, around us. I groped over the bow. “Pebbles,” I reported, hardly able to believe it. Our boat was being nudged by quiet waves onto a gravel shore.
