Artemis Rising

by Cheri Lasota

  “Please.” Arethusa heard the echo of a voice she knew. “Please open your eyes. You remember the beach, yes? You remember the sun on your face. You remember that I didn’t want to hurt your arm but I did, didn’t I?”

  She remembered. And now it was the reason for the shaking that she forgot. She felt the last tremor pull through her spine and ratchet into her broken arm.

  When at last her limbs grew still, the memory of Tristão Vazante’s eyes heaved her up from the drowning pool like the outstretched hand of a Catholic saint. And there they were again, those glass-pale eyes snatching light from the window, gazing at her.

  “You remember now?” It was clear he didn’t expect an answer, and she was glad of it. He touched her temple with his index finger and then touched his own. “We understand each other, I think.” He smiled and it lit up his face with sunlight.

  She blinked again, and then there were three of them. The padre stood near, just as he had before. But a woman now stood there, in a dark blue cloak with a gigantic hood that almost hid her whole face. Yet when the woman looked down at her, Arethusa noticed radiant skin and brilliant almond-colored eyes peeking out from behind the heavy cloth. The lady was beautiful.

  “I am Jacinta Marto of the Third Order Beguines. I’ll be taking care of you.” The lady removed her cloak to reveal a plain black dress. “Tristão, thank you, but Irmã Rosa will be after you to get the children ready.”

  Arethusa glanced at him. He no longer had the look of a vagabond from the streets of New Bedford, though his brown wool pants and shirt were frayed at the edges from too much washing. He smiled again, but Arethusa pressed her lips together. He was looking at her bandages and bruises, and at her new nightgown that did nothing to hide them.

  “Shouldn’t I stay awhile longer?” Tristão said. “She might find a bit of comfort in it.”

  “No.” Senhorita Jacinta shook her head. “It’s not your place, Tristão. Let Padre Salvador comfort her with prayers today.”

  But Tristão was right. The moment Senhorita Jacinta pushed him out the door and shuffled after him, Arethusa felt a strange void, as if the sun had set or a candle had burned out. The room felt colder and the priest’s eyes seemed darker. He clasped his hands behind his back, and something about the strength of his gaze made her stare at his shoes, black and plain, scuffed at the edges.

  “Senhorita Maré?” He pulled up a chair beside her bed, and still she did not look at his face but rather at his starched white collar, stiff as a dead bird. “Eva?”

  Her old name reminded her of the moon rite aboard ship, the last time she had held that name and the last time she had seen her mother alive.

  No, she is still alive. She has surely gone to join her Alpheus at last.

  When Arethusa didn’t respond to him, Padre Salvador sprang from his chair and walked to the open window, which blew in a fresh breeze from the bay. He paused there and she waited.

  “Tristão certainly has been happy to make your acquaintance. In fact, I’ve never seen him so happy in the whole of his life as the day he brought you here.” Padre turned to her and smiled. “I think he believes he is your protector.”

  Arethusa did not know what to make of this admission. Curious that this boy should care so much for a foundling, a nobody. What was she to him?

  “Tristão suffers the saudade. You know that word, yes? He lost his mother before he knew her, and so he mourns without knowing why.”

  Arethusa did know that word. Saudade. The memory of loss. The deep longing for what cannot be, for one who cannot be found again. She thought of her mother then. Yes, Arethusa knew that word well.

  Padre Leandro interrupted her thoughts. “But he is, as I said, as happy as I’ve ever seen him. You’ve done him good. For that, I thank you.”

  The priest walked back to the chair. He sat down again, hunched his shoulders, and his voice drew low as he turned to her.

  “Yesterday, Senhorita Jacinta told me that when she first gave you a change of clothes, she noticed you wore a necklace.”

  Sweat pearled in Arethusa’s palms. The moonstone. She longed to reach for it under her gown but she kept still, her gaze focused on the priest’s probing eyes.

  “Senhorita Jacinta wanted me to look at it. She thinks it might be a family heirloom. May I see it?” he said.

  She shook her head and clutched the stone under her dress until her fingers ached.

  “Eva.” He stepped toward her and reached for it. “This may help us find your family.”

  She shut her eyes and held tighter to the moonstone. If he took it from her, she’d lose its protection, but, more than that, it was her last link to her mother.

  “What’s going on in here?” At the sound of Senhorita Jacinta’s voice, Arethusa’s eyes popped open. The nurse raised her eyebrows as Padre Salvador looked up.

  “I was asking Eva if I might see this pendant you told me about,” he explained.

  “She needs her rest, Padre. You must come back later when she is feeling up to it. Your prayers can wait till then.”

  “Of course,” he said with obliging ease, as Senhorita Jacinta led him out into the corridor.

  “You frightened...” Arethusa heard Senhorita Jacinta say.

  “I hadn’t realized—”

  “Yes, well.” Arethusa made out the last few words of Senhorita Jacinta’s whispers before their footsteps drifted away: “...Ask when... ready.”

  Arethusa leaned back against her pillow and sighed. The moonstone was safe for now.

  That night, Arethusa stared out at Ilhéu das Cabras for hours. Though the southern rock now hid the sinking Sea Nymph from her view, she couldn’t get the image of it out of her head. Was her mother out there somewhere? Had she found her Alpheus or did she breathe her last breath afraid and alone out in the cold sea?

  At the heart of Arethusa’s fear was Alpheus. Who was this strange god? And was it possible that he would appear to her as Diogo? Her mother might have been mistaken about him. Arethusa didn’t even know if Diogo had survived the wreck of the Sea Nymph. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see him again, given their last moments together, but she was anxious for news of the wreck, anxious to discover whether Diogo was the God her mother had so fervently thought him.

  Yet if her true Alpheus were still out there, when would he come for her? Should she welcome him or be on her guard? She wrestled with so many unanswerable questions. Who or what had saved her from drowning—was it Artemis or God? Or even the moonstone itself? Who was she to believe in now? A great fear seized her as the hours of the night passed, a growing uneasiness of menacing evil, evil that seeped into her dreams and twisted them into nightmares.

  *

  Arethusa flew so close to the sea, the spray of the crests touched her flesh. She moved within the waves of air, shifting her flight with the currents. Deep, swelling waves foamed below her body. Inside the waves, faces and bodies writhed in a dance of agony. Water-demons they were, black as shadow. She heard their moaning in the crash of the breakers.

  The wind whipped through her, making her hair thrash about her face and her skirts crack like a new-filled sail. She flew past the cliffs of Terceira, past the lights of Angra do Heroísmo, past the dark shadow of Ilhéu das Cabras. The moon escaped from the clouds to reveal a ship forging its way through misty waters. The full sails billowed silver in the glow of the full moon, but as Arethusa flew closer, the grand ship became a ghost ship. The mainmast was split in half, and the sails that had shone so brilliant a moment before were but tattered shreds.

  Arethusa flew near the stern and rose from the sea’s surface toward the height of the deck. As she ascended, she glimpsed the name round about the stern: Sea Nymph. The ornate lettering glistened gold in the pale light, like a beacon calling to ancient sailors from the deep.

  A great heaviness drove her body down, forcing her to alight on the ship’s worn planking. The decks were laden with seaweed, eaten through with time and the ravages of the sea. Mute sailors d
raped in grimy rags took to their labors with a mindlessness, and each in his turn glanced her way as she touched soundless upon the deck. Walking forward with a deliberation that was not of her own will, she took in the looks of the sailors as she passed. Their lifeless eyes followed her and their blank faces gave her a bitter chill.

  As she moved under the once-towering mainmast, the face of her dead father sneered at her as he hung from the lines overhead. Though her shoes seemed to fill with heavy stones, she ran. The sailors watched her with more awareness now, and they shuffled behind her as she rushed up to the prow.

  A presence filled the wind behind her. Her mind whispered a warning to her heart: Don’t look back. Don’t look back! She ran down the stairs to the weather deck and darted past the deckhouse. The presence was getting closer. Arethusa felt it breathing down her neck. She had to see what it was. Nearly to the forecastle stairs, she whipped her head back. A giant wave rose behind the ship, blocking out the moon.

  Arethusa ran faster. At last, she reached the stairs to the forward deck. Her mother was bound to the bowsprit with heavy, sodden ropes. A nightgown encrusted with brine hung from her body, and her hair was swept up in a fisherman’s net woven with leaves of seaweed. Her mother’s bloodied face twisted in agony as she strained against the taut ropes. Arethusa rushed to her as the sailors circled around them.

  “Mãe!” Arethusa clutched her throat at the sound. Had she regained the use of her voice again?

  “Arethusa, behind you!” Mãe shouted above the wind.

  Arethusa gasped as she turned. Beneath the wave, a man stood at the vessel’s railing. The great wave behind him froze, suspended in air. It was almost as if—no, no, he could not control the sea. He was just a man. Arethusa stopped on the stairs, her foot pausing at the top step. The man raised his arm, and the wave drew back into the sea. The black holes that were his eyes bored into hers. She knew beyond all doubt who it was.

  “Alpheus,” her mother pleaded.

  “Silence.” He sliced the air with his arm to dismiss her.

  “But I have brought her to you.”

  “Speak again and I will banish you.”

  “Let her go,” Arethusa yelled through the wind.

  “You will make no demands here. I am master of all you see.”

  “What do you want of me?” Arethusa said.

  “I want you to remember your place.” He drew out his words into stabbing knives. “And you will.”

  He held out his hand to her, his fingers stretched taut. She felt a powerful force pushing her to her knees. Trembling against the weight, she lowered her face to the deck. His voice inside her head hammered a terrible rhythm.

  I am coming... I am coming for you...

  “Do what he says, Arethusa, or he will kill us both,” her mother shouted.

  Alpheus’s eyes locked on Mãe. “I told you...!” His voice bellowed deep from within as though he were filling with thunder.

  The weight lifted from Arethusa’s body as he raised his arms. Behind her, Arethusa heard the splintering of timbers and planks. She whirled around to see her mother falling as the bowsprit broke away from the ship and plunged into the sea.

  “Mãe,” Arethusa yelled, running toward the bow. Her mother’s screams echoed through the wind until they died away with a distant splash. Alpheus’s footsteps were close behind, but Arethusa ran straight for the broken bow. Just as Alpheus touched her hair, she dove into the sea. A moment later, she broke the surface, but the oily bodies of the water demons surrounded her, whispering her name over and over like a curse.

  “Arethusa. Arethusa.”

  Their slimy hands seized her arms, her hair, her throat—

  ARETHUSA AWOKE WITH A SILENT CRY, DROWNING in a sea of her own sweat. The moonlight streamed over her, but the shadow of Alpheus still lingered inside her body, black and cold. She hoped her nightmare was her merely imagination running wild, that there was no truth in any part of it. She hoped rather than believed it.

  Arethusa heard a breath, saw a shape. She shivered and lifted her head to see more clearly into the dark.

  “I’ve found you at last,” the shadow whispered, its voice incredulous.

  Her shivers turned to a deep shaking as the sweat of her nightmare cooled in her waking. Inch by inch, she pulled back from his shadow until she felt the protective light of Artemis pool over her skin.

  Even toneless, Diogo’s voice was unmistakable. And now he was standing over her in the infirmary, here in the dark where no one else could see.

  When he said her name, her fear expected it: this was the name he had no right to know. “Arethusa.”

  She did not acknowledge him.

  His shadow took a step and the light hit his face. She covered her dropped jaw with her hand. To see him with that hideous scar twisting his mouth and scratches and bruises marring his fine features—it made her wonder how he had survived the shipwreck at all.

  “I thought you were dead.” He reached out.

  She recoiled, curling tighter into herself.

  He made no more attempts. “I saw you fall.”

  Fall? She didn’t remember falling. Did he mean that she had slipped from the deck into the sea? The last she recalled, she was still in the stateroom with her mother. But her nightmare told a different story. Her father was tangled in the lines, just as the rescuers had found him. No one knew what had happened to her mother. Had she seen her own mother fall from the prow in real life but blocked it from her memory?

  Diogo mistook her grimace for pain. An apology swept over his face. He reached again, and this time she went rigid in a confusion of memories. His fingers pressed against her neck. She felt her pulse beating against his touch. The blood rushed up, pounding in her head. The bruise began to constrict, to choke, to remind her of the taste of distrust.

  She brought her hand up to hide the bruise and his hand slipped away.

  “That boy Tristão said your memory of the shipwreck hasn’t come back.” He cocked his eyebrow, as if asking whether this was true.

  She nodded once.

  “I saw you after... Your mother told me what happened. She said your father came to check on you after the ship heeled over. He saw the moonstone and the candles.” It wasn’t like Diogo to hesitate, but he touched her neck again with his finger before he said, “It was your father who did this to you.”

  She brought her hand up to her cheek, remembering the last time Pai had found them out. Would he go so far? He was a strict man, and quick to anger, but she had thought his religion at least would keep him from trying to kill his own daughter. Arethusa had wondered why she did not feel grief for him. Were her lost memories of that night breaking through to the surface, whispering to her of things she would wish to forget?

  “I wasn’t there, or I would have protected you.” Diogo laid his hand on her arm, but it set a warning bell off in her mind. She yanked her arm back away from him. His frown was unnaturally gentle.

  “There is something else I wanted to say. I’m sorry for the things I said that night. I never meant...” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

  To see him so awkward and penitent was peculiar. It made her wonder whether her reaction over his scars was too harsh and unkind. She had made him feel ashamed, and as she looked into his eyes now, she regretted that she had not shown him some compassion.

  “I am not the same now as I was that night. I am something more now.” He squared his shoulders and his chin jutted out. “I am Alpheus.”

  Hearing that name on his lips was a blasphemy. It did not make her afraid. It made her angry. No matter her mother’s prophesy, his was a false claim. She could not believe Diogo a God. Her Alpheus was still to come. He would have blue eyes and he would be kind—a kindness Diogo did not possess.

  “Our destinies are no longer our own, Arethusa.” He stared at her, watched as she tried to master her resentment, her confusion.

  They both caught the glimmer of the moonstone when Diogo’s shadow pulled back fr
om the bed. She had laid it beside her on the blanket so it could catch the moonlight—and with it the Goddess’s power—while she slept.

  Diogo reached for the stone, and though she jerked up, ready to defend, he beat her to it.

  “I am your fate.” Diogo dangled the pendant before her eyes. “You need no protection from this trinket now.” He eyed the moonstone and then slipped the chain around his neck and under his shirt.

  She pulled herself up, ignoring all the whispers of pain that told her to lie still. She grabbed for the chain at his neck but merely succeeded in grasping a fistful of the fabric of his nightshirt.

  “Get some sleep, little queen.” Diogo leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth even as he brushed her hand away. “I will come tomorrow, and then we can begin again.” With a quick glance into the hall, he stole out of the infirmary.

  *

  “Eva? Padre Salvador and Tristão Vazante are here to see you.” Senhorita Jacinta woke her with a gentle shake from her afternoon nap. She’d been sleeping most of the day, but it felt good to rest her aching bones and muscles. With her arm in a sling and her ankle wrapped tight, she could accomplish little else.

  Senhorita Jacinta helped her to sit, and then the padre came in, face beaming.

  “You look rested, Eva,” he said. “Have you been sleeping well?”

  She nodded and glanced toward Tristão as he came through the door. He was wearing the same uniform, but now she noticed how ragged his woolen shirt and pants were. His big, bare feet stuck out, yet somehow his poor clothes made him seem less intimidating. He smiled with such sincerity that she smiled back, the comfort in seeing him again a surprise to her.

  “Padre Salvador says you might have learned your letters in America,” Senhorita Jacinta said. “He’s brought you his old writing slate from his school days on the mainland. Can you write?”

  At her nod, Padre Salvador brought out a small slate board and pencil from behind his back and laid them on her lap.