“Are you certain you’re not Aphrodite?” Beatrice asked, handing her a filled cup balanced on a delicate saucer.
The goddess chuckled. “Would that I were.”
Belle asked, “Do you know them, other deities of old? Is everything we’ve come to believe in our respective faiths a lie? Were the Greek myths right all along?”
Persephone gave an odd laugh. “Is there a conflict between what I knew and what you might believe, you mean? Not necessarily. I know … forces. I do not call them by the names you do. We’ve our own titles, if ever such words are spoken. Of all my names, I like this best, and use it because it came from mortals, whom I adore.
“I drift in my sphere and other forces drift in theirs. Sometimes paths cross because they are destined. Something far greater than I turns the prism that changes my colors, and it alone knows every mystery.”
“When did you and Phoenix meet?” Verena asked, her face aglow. Beatrice guessed she was a true romantic. The quiet ones often were.
Persephone blinked, then smiled warmly. “I first spied him in a field full of sunflowers. He was touching the seeds and arranging them into iterations. A divine mathematician.”
“When?” Belle pressed.
“My sense of time and yours differ. I know it was a simpler age, back when we were made new from you beautiful mortals, freshly congealed from all your hopes and dreams, sprung from your needs and desires and fueled by your energy. Beautiful beings were birthed from your souls—and terrible beings, too. But Phoenix … was always beautiful.”
“Show me, please,” Verena breathed, adding passionately in Arabic, “I seek windows into souls. That is how I can see my own more clearly and heal more precisely. Give me a window. Do you think or live in any way like us?”
Persephone sighed.
“I’m filled with mortal emotions. In fact, I am able to hold more within me than your mortal bodies ever could. But I imagine falling in love is the same for us both.” The goddess bit her lip and smiled. “If you wish to indulge me, who am I to decline?” She lifted her prismatic palms.
It was as before in the sacred space: Her vision overtook them.
Suddenly the women were in that very field of sunflowers; their blooms of a brighter yellow than Beatrice had ever known existed. In the distance was the sea, vast and sapphire, the sound of its waves an intoxicating lull.
Phoenix surpassed beauty. The women collectively gasped. He towered above the flowers, yet bent to them with grace and fascination, a vision wholly angelic. His great wings were pure energy, incorporeal and delicate, transparent feathers made of light. His long black hair made a striking contrast to the rest. He was without clothes; his luminescent body lean and powerful.
His wings artfully hid his nether regions from view, which was just as well for the propriety of the moment. Verena in her robes, Beatrice and Belle in their European traveling fashions, they stood invisible amid the flowers of this ancient field and watched Persephone approach. Her shifting colors infused his lit wings, like beams through a stained-glass window.
His dark eyes drank her in as a greeting.
“Patterns,” he said, his voice distinct, low, and rich. He held up a sunflower and pointed to its dark center. His finger traced the ridges, and the seeds ordered themselves at his command. “Everything can be arranged into one. Perfected. Life—one beautiful equation.”
The goddess gasped, delighted, and the sunflowers grew taller, their petals opening wider. “Can I be arranged into a pattern?”
“I know nothing of your properties,” he replied. “Not yet.” He took a step closer. “Would you give me leave to ascertain?”
“I give you leave,” she whispered.
He took a long moment to parse her with his gaze. Finally he said, “Your heart is constant, for it is your heart that so illuminates you. Your colors are ever-changing, painting the world with every emotion. You would never bore me. I find that … of wondrous value.”
She took a step closer. “My palette is vast but my heart unchanging. None yet has won it. There must be a reason I was drawn to this field today…”
“Ah,” he said. “My equation was missing a variable. You could be that variable, should you desire such a place. I am a constant.” A light danced in his eyes as he touched her cheek. Wildflowers of every kind sprang up at her feet. The field was swiftly awash in every color of the cosmos. Phoenix looked around, greatly pleased. “Action, reaction. Good.”
“Action,” she breathed, and turned her face into his hand to kiss his palm.
“Reaction,” he countered, and his wings enfolded her.
The field was suddenly filled with music. The rhythms of their pulses were perfectly complementary. In the distance, shimmering, glimmering forms of indescribable beauty danced upon a hilltop.
“The Muses approve,” Phoenix stated. “They sing for us.”
He raised his palm in the air, and Persephone pressed her hand to it.
“You are a being of light,” she said, “so why hair of onyx hue? Your eyes, too. Such contrast. You are light but not all light. Tell me what you’re made of.”
His voice was rich thunder, a promised storm. “I am tethered to this world, to its mortals and the birth pangs of their civilizations. They begin to understand darkness. As day must pass into night, so we must learn to love darkness, to own it and still remain true to the light. Dark and light are not synonymous with evil and good. The palette is complex. I am Balance. I am the between, with feet for the ground, wings for the air. And you, you are all the colors I’ve awaited. May I hold you?”
“For empirical evidence or for pleasure?” she countered.
“Both.”
“Please do.”
He seized her in powerful arms, and suddenly she was airborne, lifted up by his great wings, the music of the Muses swelling in response. Her shimmering robes buffeted him as he slowly coursed over the field with her, a flight of both leisure and delight. It was revealed that the flowering field grew atop a sheer cliff, and out they flew out over that crystal sea that arched its waves toward them, magnetized by their pull. The drama of the vista was as breathtaking as their airborne, graceful forms.
He watched her intently as they soared, ascribing meaning to each of her shifting hues. Midair, he held her tight with one arm and traced the outline of her face with his fingertips.
“Of your colors I am most drawn to the blue—your willingness to see solutions to everything.” He touched the hollow of her throat. “You render the mathematician an alchemist. You have wrought change in me.”
She placed her hand on his cheek, examining it. Their caresses were each an exquisite experiment. “The colors you see in me, I do not see them. I see none on my skin.”
“The blank whiteness of light contains every color. You do see them, all, all at once.”
She wrapped her limbs more fully around him. “You are the solution to everything. Your white wings hold constant all my variables.”
“While you light the world with your rainbow. What a balance we make indeed. Do you declare constancy?” he asked, a rumbling, hopeful murmur.
“Give me your vow, and I will.”
He planted a firm and claiming kiss upon her, descending. They once again touched the sunflowers, then fell to their knees. A ring of birch trees sprouted around them, stretching in an instant to a great height, sheltering the gods’ impassioned embrace. The field became a verdant space of leaf and blossom, sun and shade. The whole of the land shimmered as the flowers continued to grow, diversify, and magnify. It was a celebration of a glorious union.
The Muses danced, the music swelled—and suddenly the women were again on the deck of their ship, all of them blushing. The vision had been inescapable and all-consuming.
Two such powerful forces of nature coming together had created a wave of heat and emotion beyond any mortal experience, and Beatrice thought poor, sensitive Verena might faint. She herself was feeling quite hot and fanned herself with her
hand.
The goddess had vanished. Perhaps she was living in her memories, unable to bear to part from them. Beatrice could not blame her; that was a memory worth living in indefinitely.
Belle sighed. “How poetic and beautiful!”
Beatrice raised an eyebrow, fighting to reclaim her usual outward equanimity. “Well, yes. But, truly, the gods are such shameless flirts.”
Verena giggled into her teacup.
Privately, Beatrice was still overcome, hoping there was some pairing for her that was just as meant to be. At the thought of such a partner, her stomach tightened, and she recalled a cool cloth upon her forehead, the gentle press of a golden-skinned hand.
Her sigh became a scowl. The gods had been scandalous and artless. Phoenix’s claim had been sudden, presumptuous and bold. Gods, she supposed, might act thus without censure. Mortals could never speak with such freedom, certainly not if they valued propriety. Mortals must dance, play games and say fine words, within the rigors of societal constraint. Gaining a true partner was never so simple a path. For most mortals, love was as much misery as it was joy. She wondered if the goddess understood that. It would prove to hurt them all if she didn’t.
* * *
In the days to come, numerous pots of tea were prepared, George consumed a good deal of champagne, and the Guard listened in on the frivolous conversations of wealthy travelers. Beatrice caught Ibrahim rolling his eyes at ignorant comments made about Egyptians, as if one trip to a foreign country afforded the English all the evidence they needed to concoct theories and assess values of cultures not their own.
Ibrahim assured Beatrice when she appeared concerned. “I am well aware that not all Englishmen are insufferable prigs. Just a great number of the ones who travel.”
Prigs? Beatrice snickered, caught off guard by a word she wouldn’t have expected him to use. But then again, he had been raised by an Englishman—about which she deeply wanted to know more. Frankly, Ibrahim spoke with such simple grace she found she liked to hear him talk about anything at all. But she could not question him; she merely waited for him to choose to reveal himself, and there was no further conversation between them that day.
George had taken to drawing caricatures of everyone on board, and he came away with a healthy roll of bills in his pockets. He kept offering to pay for their meals and wine, until Belle insisted that it was money honestly earned and that the Guard would not judge him for his own indulgences.
Beatrice could hardly eat more than plain biscuits, even fortified by Verena’s healing hand. She tried to pretend to her compatriots that she was the picture of health and hadn’t a care in the world, but she was sure her pallor betrayed her. Thankfully, no one offered her pity or any special consideration.
Ahmed had found someone on board who had bought a kissar, an instrument in the lyre family. With great cheer he insisted that it not be displayed on a wall as the Englishman intended but instead be loved and played. The fellow could not refuse, and soon Ahmed was singing and entertaining the entire vessel.
His gift was transcendent. Power flowed from his voice, his eyes; the poetry of Turks and Arabs and great Sufi leaders washed over all the travelers and made their hearts soar. It was heavenly. Aside from Verena’s occasional helping hand, Ahmed’s music was the only thing that made Beatrice able to forget her seasickness. It made Belle and George take hands, and Beatrice realized with unquestionable surety that their touch was a vow.
Verena seemed drunk with awe. She stared at Ahmed, and with the same surety Beatrice realized another choice had been made. It all seemed so natural, this pairing off. Yet Beatrice and Ibrahim were utterly unable to look at each other.
At least Beatrice didn’t feel she could look at him. Not without betraying something. Her heart was lonely. The pulses of her friends, beating in her own blood, made it all the more evident. She did wish to love again; she was young and it seemed a crime not to. But every sentence, movement or glance, reminded her that she and Ibrahim were stoic, stubborn creatures of different worlds floating on an ocean as vast as the gulf between them.
When the music ended, there were the dead. Always the dead. Beatrice felt her coterie’s hearts plummet as dread of their tasks crept in. Ghosts were seen on the water in vague clusters, likely hovering over sunken ships that lay on the ocean floor.
The spirits that had followed them onboard in Cairo were more concerning. Had they been so eager in life to get to England? Their presence on the ship defied the laws of spirits, Beatrice believed. As far as she knew, spirits were tied to people, to land, to hearths and homes. The dead weren’t adventurers. Of course, as the goddess intimated, perhaps things were changing.
Persephone had been absent since their tea party. Beatrice imagined her wandering those terrible gray corridors of the Whisper-world, a prisoner, remembering love in a time of flowers. That saddened her. The creature deserved a verdant field and an angel to hold her close. But it would seem that life, for divinities as well as mortals, did not always afford them what they wanted.
When George alerted them that their journey was nearly over, her body rejoiced at the idea of solid ground and the pain in her hands began to ease. She could finally remove her gloves a moment and flex her aching fingertips.
A cityscape grew in their vision until it became an undeniable leviathan. The bosom of the great empire was beautiful and terrifying, a sprawling, huge, sooty creature. It loomed, a mammoth collection of interlocked beasts; sporadic fires of industry spouting from the smokestack noses of countless sleeping dragons. The waterways of the Southampton port were covered with a crouched horde, any of which could wake at any moment and in one lick swallow their large boat whole.
Beatrice studied the light in the sky, seeing how it changed, how it thickened and grew gray. Perhaps the walls between the Whisper-world and the mortal world would prove thinner in England. There certainly were plenty of spirits about, and grayscale was the communal palette.
The pit of her stomach that had been reserved for seasickness and the occasional pain at being near to Ibrahim with nothing to be said or done about it was now overtaken by dread. While she hadn’t ever taken a census, she could say for a certainty there were far more spirits here than in Cairo. Clearly the Guard had their work cut out for them.
The dead were waiting.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
A few of the many barrier pins keeping the worlds separate were now spattered with blood—and tears, for good measure. The pain seared deeper the more Persephone cut. The flesh of her arms and thighs was scarred and not healing as quickly as she wished. But she hid the traces, wound her robes tight, and acted like nothing was out of the ordinary.
“You do realize I’ll do anything for you,” Darkness blurted during another of their obligatory promenades. His jaw chattered, making his earnest tone something absurd.
“You mean to me,” she clarified with an edge. “You’ll do anything to me.”
“I’d rip the worlds apart if you abandoned this place entirely.”
Persephone felt her pulse quicken. Was he sensing something worrisome about her mood that he dared such a threat? She had to play the game as much as she could bear. She couldn’t have him tightening the leash now, increasing the illness in her blood to the point where she’d be bedridden with the rot of the Whisper-world. He always seemed satisfied to see her weakening. She had to seem too dispirited to be inventive.
“I can’t escape,” she stated, putting a plaintive note into her voice. “I’ve tried everything possible to get away. I’ve tried to die. The Whisper-world has so deeply infected me, I am forever bound to return. You have, at last, won.”
Darkness made a sound like a delighted child’s noise. Persephone quit his dais, not wishing him to make her repeat the lie, leaving him to his glee. Following paths to the Liminal, she slipped through the gate to the mortal world, where she found herself, as she often did, in the sacred space. The Guard were absent.
Bitterness, bil
e, and anger surfaced within her. If this emotional backlash had happened in the Whisper-world, her feelings would have manifested into veritable shackles, but now she merely echoed Darkness’s words. “He’d rip the worlds apart. Dear God, he’ll undo the barrier pins himself in order to find me.”
Yet wasn’t that the point, the very aim she worked toward? Yes, but it needed to be done to the Guard’s mortal advantage. On the seal above, her vision had revealed a veritable army of spirits crashing down on Athens—surely that indicated the worlds would merge. But glimpses weren’t a plan, and one did not just flirt with opening such barriers. It would be the end of mortal life as they knew it if things were not tightly controlled.
Hopelessness accosted her, fear of the vagaries of what she was attempting, and she let tears come as they would. It was safer to shed them here, lest the shadows lap them up to use against her and those she loved.
Falling to the stone floor, her tears rolled into a peculiar pattern. Her sorrow shaped lines and curves that drew phoenix fire. A portion of his flame coursed through the room in immediate empathic response, rising above and engulfing the tear-drawn symbols.
Persephone watched, fascinated. The droplets drew together, hundreds of tiny beads running toward one another and into a small hole at the center of the mosaic. The mercurylike tears filled that hole and began to stack upon themselves, forming something rounded at the top, oddly notched and gleaming silver.
A key? It was another key. But what was it to?
As the liquid and flame continued to shift, Persephone realized the image on the floor was a map: the floor plan of Athens! Beside them, another map, of sloping curves and meandering paths: the Whisper-world.
At some point, she knew, these places would join. Here was a way for the Guard to prepare; this was a map of the merge. Phoenix was lighting their way.
“Oh, beloved,” she murmured. “Isn’t it beautiful how magic can still be new to us? That there are gifts around every corner, despite our suffering? Isn’t it wonderful that I can still be amazed?”
Perilous Prophecy Page 14
