by Mobi Warren
He pushed her to the ground and straddled her body with his thick legs, his face a mask of rage. He scooped a rock from the ground and raised his arm in a threatening gesture. She screamed and to her surprise, he dropped the rock and looked wildly about him. Something strange was happening to the air. A frenzied blur of gold and black took shape and clamped over Karpos’ head like a writhing helmet. He yelled and began to slap at his own face and chest. Like a man possessed, he batted at the air as it filled with hundreds of gold arrows. The bees! In fury, they attacked Karpos. He scrambled to his feet and hurdled down the path pursued by an army of enraged bees.
At that moment, Hecataeus came running from the direction of the cottage followed by a barking Dove. Seeing the geographer, Amethea grabbed her shawl and flung it over her bruised body. She tried to stand but fell back down with a cry.
“I heard you scream,” Hecataeus gasped, nearly out of breath. “By the gods, what has happened?”
“Karpos.”
His eyes flashed in anger and he turned to pursue her attacker but Amethea lifted a hand and said, “No, let him go. It is over.”
Concern tempered the anger in the geographer’s eyes as he knelt down to assist her. “Amethea, are you hurt? Did he—”
“No,” she answered, “Artemis sent her bees. But my ankle—” She gritted her teeth against the rising pain. Her left ankle was gashed and bleeding, dark as a mash of grapes and rapidly swelling. She had twisted it beneath her and dashed it against a sharp rock when Karpos flung her to the ground.
At that moment all hope died in Amethea’s breast. “I cannot run now. I cannot run.” Tears streamed down her face. The ground where she sat was littered with the bodies of dying bees that had sacrificed themselves to protect her. Artemis, the Bee Goddess, had sent her sacred, brave messengers, but Karpos had still won. There was no chance to save Hippasus now. Amethea lifted a dead bee in her hand, bowed her head over it and wept bitterly. Hecataeus’ face filled with sorrow as he gazed at the red-haired young woman bereft of hope. He lifted her in his arms and carried her back to the cottage, stepping over tattered white roses and dead bees.
Melissa and Beau biked to the riverbank with Hermes riding in his basket. When they arrived, Beau led them to the spot where the next morning’s 5K would start. They leaned their bikes against a towering cypress and sat beneath it. Melissa kicked off her shoes. Dozens of knobby cypress knees thrust up along the riverbank like troops of miniature dwarves. Watercress with small white flowers floated at the water’s edge close to the trail. A massive pecan tree with flaked red bark stood close by. These were survivor trees and sitting beneath them strengthened Melissa’s resolve.
She took two pieces of origami paper from her pack, handed one to Beau, and they both began folding. After several minutes, she completed one bee and proceeded to fold a second, doing her best to conjure an image of Hippasus in her mind, imagining him not as she had last seen him, tethered to a rope in the jail cell, but how he had looked the day he brought the Yolo bees to the lavender field. They had surrounded him like the rings of Saturn. She tried to relax her mind, remembering how Noi had said surrender could be a path to joy. She hoped it was also a path to connecting with Hippasus and to calling the Yolo bees home.
It began. She heard the strains of flute music and felt the rise of nameless panic, a tingling in her limbs coupled with fear she might dissolve, blank out permanently, never find her way home. She gave herself to it anyway.
“Mel?” Beau looked up from his own folding and saw Melissa staring straight ahead. He understood she was travelling, but then to his utter surprise, watched as a golden light rippled down her arms and across her face. Her hair sparkled with tiny red fires and her skin glowed like the translucent surface of a pearl. Her entire body glowed, shimmered, faded in and out of sight. Then to Beau’s great alarm, Melissa vanished. Hermes, who had been lying beside her, lifted his head and howled.
Melissa, shocked and helpless, witnessed Karpos attack Amethea. She saw the honeybees come to Amethea’s aid and the arrival of Hecataeus. She now followed the geographer as he carried Amethea back to the cottage. As she picked her feet over thorns and stones, she could sense the physical movements of her body but when she looked down at her feet or lifted her hands in front of her eyes, all she could see was a fading gold light, and then even that disappeared. Was she still sitting beneath the cypress tree and only her mind had travelled? Yes, that’s how it had been before. The seizures had caused hallucinations. But why then did she feel so present, so physically present right now?
She could feel the weight of her body and her heart pounding in her chest. The soles of her feet felt the soft grasses and sharp stones. She even felt a lock of her hair fall over one eye. And though she could not see even one particle of her body, she knew with every fiber of her being that she was more present in the world of Amethea and Hippasus than she had ever been before. What she felt was not the thin, hypnotic quality of her other seizures, but a bracing, raw sense of being bodily in the here and now of Ancient Dia. Her invisible arms prickled with invisible goose bumps. Was she invisible because the particles that made up her body were not cohering? How had Bella explained that property of quarks? And what if all the billions of quarks that made Melissa Melissa suddenly blinked out of existence entirely?
Melissa fought a wave of terror and nausea. She tried to convince herself that Beau was still with her, that he was sitting beside her beneath the cypress tree waiting for her to snap out of a seizure. But could her body be in two places at once? She steeled herself. Whatever was happening, she had work to do here. Though how she might save Hippasus or retrieve the Yolo bees, she had no clue. She continued to follow Hecataeus back to the cottage, desperate for some sign. She slipped in the doorway and watched as he placed Amethea on a low couch. Dika, shouting curses against Karpos, rushed about gathering strips of wool. She told Hecataeus that Pythagoras had left for the village shortly beforehand, saying he wanted to walk along the shore there.
“He was holding a small square of something,” she said. “Kept folding it this way and that.”
Dika crushed several cloves of garlic and mixed the pulp with wine vinegar, which she applied as a poultice over Amethea’s ankle. She then wrapped the ankle in strips of clean wool. Assured that Dika could best tend to Amethea’s injury, Hecataeus went off to find Pythagoras. Dove curled at the foot of the couch and softly whined.
“Do not despair, Amethea,” Hecataeus said before departing. “Pythagoras will not allow your brother to drown. Nor will I.”
Pythagoras? Did he mean the famous mathematician, Melissa wondered.
Dika gave Amethea a strong draught of wine mixed with herbs to ease the pain and help her sleep. Amethea turned her face to the wall. She could still feel the brutal press of Karpos’ hands on her body. She felt unclean and defeated as she fell into a troubled sleep.
Melissa continued to watch, befuddled by a body that was both there and not there. She tried to remember what Bella had said the evening they first met, something about how bees might use quarks to coil messages inside other dimensions. Was she herself coiled within other dimensions that couldn’t be seen in the three dimensional space of Dia? The creeping fear that she would dissolve into nothingness gripped her. Bella had said something about gluons, too, sticky particles that held matter together. Had Melissa come un-glued?
The afternoon slipped into violet dusk then darkened to indigo night. Melissa lowered her non-body beside Amethea’s couch to rest. She longed to find herself back beneath the cypress tree along the banks of the Sabinal River, next to Beau and Hermes. Would she ever get home? Sometime past midnight, with a waning moon shining through the doorway and casting a soft glow over Amethea, Melissa saw a thin golden light begin to outline her own body. She felt a tingling in her arms and legs as the light revealed her body’s contours. What happened next she could never fully describe but she felt a stretch
ing and thinning of her body as if she were being divided into many small parts, separate and yet connected. She transformed into a long, undulating line of honeybees that contracted into a swarm and then stretched back out into a line. This line spiraled around and around Amethea until it formed a diaphanous cloud. All the particles of Melissa moved with the collective mind of a honeybee swarm and in that form hovered over Amethea, humming the songs she had heard Amethea play on the aulos. And Melissa suddenly understood what it is that mystics feel.
An hour before sunrise, Amethea awoke to find Pythagoras sitting beside her intoning a healing chant and moving his cupped hands over her ankle. He had removed the strips of wool bandage. Hecataeus and an anxious Dika stood behind him. The swelling and discoloration had disappeared. There was no sign of gash or sprain. At Pythagoras’ bidding Amethea sat up and placed her foot gingerly on the floor. She slowly stood and placed weight on the foot. She felt a few pricks of pain but they eased as she took a few steps. Encouraged, she walked around the room.
“I am healed!” she cried. She jogged around the room, her laughter rising like the babble of a creek. She pranced about like a spirited horse. There remained a mild ache and stiffness in her ankle but that was nothing. “Blessed are Dika’s herbs and the invocations of Pythagoras!” She flung her arms into the air.
“More than that, I think,” said Pythagoras as he handed her an origami bee. When I arrived last night, I found this perched on your ankle.”
“Ornament of the Bee Maker!” marveled Amethea. “Artemis has been here in the night.” She lifted her foot. “My ankle is as lithe as a nymph’s. I will run my race, after all!”
Dove came bounding in from the courtyard.
“She slept beside the couch all night,” said Hecataeus, “and would not leave your side.”
Amethea bent down and kissed the top of the dog’s blond head. Dove leapt about the girl and barked with joy.
“There is no time to lose,” warned Pythagoras. “Preparations for the sacrifice will already have begun. Bathe and put on your race chiton, Amethea.” He turned to Hecataeus, “Hurry to town and inform the Dia elders that the race will proceed. I am sure Karpos has told them otherwise.”
Hecataeus was off like an arrow from Apollo’s bow.
In her mother’s chamber, Amethea undressed. She smoothed scented olive oil over her skin and with Dika’s help scraped it off with a strigil, a curved metal tool used to clean the body. Dika handed her the race chiton that Amethea’s mother had so lovingly embroidered. With a gold brooch, she joined two ends of the cloth over Amethea’s left breast and shoulder, but left Amethea’s right breast bare in the manner prescribed for races. The chiton fell just above her knees. This, Amethea thought, is how Atalanta dressed when she raced her doomed suitors.
Amethea strapped on her sandals and hastened down the path towards the village. A crowd had gathered and the air pulsed like lyre strings too tightly strung. Some spectators parted to let her pass. When others tried to block her way, she pushed her way through. The mother of Kleis, wearing a dark veil of mourning, turned away as if to shun her. Vendors snaked through the crowd hawking thorn-covered branches and crude-shaped toys made of clay. Amethea saw with disgust that the toys were meant to represent Hippasus, grotesque shapes of a half-boy half-goat. Several people were slashing the clay toy with thorns to purge their grief and anger over loved ones lost to the fever.
Amethea halted when she reached the strip of beach where the race would begin. Farther down the shore, a wooden pedestal had been erected on which two elders stood, one a stout man with a blond beard and an air of self-importance, the other tall and angular with a pinched expression on his face. They took turns addressing the crowd, telling them that the sacrifice would soon cleanse the island of fever. The clamor of the crowd surged and then fell to an uneasy silence as people parted to let the guard pass who was charged with leading Hippasus into the sea.
Angry tears filled Amethea’s eyes. Hippasus’ hands were tightly bound and another rope was looped around his neck. He struggled to hobble forward. The guard yanked impatiently at the rope and Hippasus tumbled face forward, gashing his lip on a stone. Some in the crowd jeered as blood trickled down his chin. Others whipped him with branches until his skin was raw and bleeding. Amethea forced her way to him and helped him stand back up. He lifted his head and smiled weakly at her. Through cracked and bleeding lips, he whispered, “Amethea, will you run? Karpos said you would not.”
“Karpos is a liar.”
“Amethea, I wish I could hear you tell the story of Atalanta one last time.”
The guard jerked the rope around Hippasus’ neck again and snarled at Amethea. “Move aside.”
“There is no need to tell a story, brother. I will be the story today.”
“With the same ending?”
“There are no golden apples this time.”
The guard shoved Hippasus forward as sister and brother shared a last glance.
The race had been timed to coincide with the creeping rise of the morning’s tide. Early sunlight sparkled on the waves beneath a pale cloudless sky tinged rose at the edges. In the distance, a faint outline of the main island of Crete was visible.
The burly guard led Hippasus out into the waves until the water reached the boy’s waist. Amethea watched as another man, one who sat on the Council, pounded a stake into the firm sand beneath the water’s surface and then lashed Hippasus to it. When high tide crested, the water would cover his head and he would drown.
Already the water was beginning its slow creep. White-tipped waves lapped with a little more force as each minute passed. It was time for the race to begin. Not only did Amethea need to win it to ransom her brother’s life, she needed to complete the course faster than the tides could rise. She looked over and saw Eucles adjusting his sandal. He wore only a narrow loincloth and a thin white headband. His body gleamed as if he had polished it. His legs were long and lean; he sported no beard yet, only a tumble of brown hair that grazed his shoulders.
Amethea jogged to the starting line and took her place beside him. Eucles stole a sideways glance at her and for an instant their eyes locked. He jerked his head ever so slightly and in that quick gesture, Amethea understood that he did not want to run this race. Was it because he was ashamed to race a girl? She did not know him well but he had always struck her as kind and cheerful. She liked how he called to the dolphins as he ran along the shore. Perhaps, she thought, he even felt pity for Hippasus.
Pythagoras and Hecataeus, she saw, stood impassively by the wooden platform where the race would end. Dika and Kimon, ever loyal, stood beside the two learned men. Dove, restrained by a rope leash, crouched beside the couple. Dika placed one hand on the hound’s head to calm her. Her other hand clutched a votive figure of Pan. Kimon bent his head over something he held in his hands. Was he working with clay? How strange, Amethea thought, that he would be fashioning one of his little figures at such a moment.
Karpos strode forward, his face and upper body covered with welts. He avoided Amethea’s eyes as he barked an order for the two runners to get ready. Amethea took a deep breath and before crouching behind the red ribbon, whispered, “Goddess, grant me swift feet.” The last thing she noticed before the red ribbon dropped was the tiny, lone figure of Hippasus in the distance, half submerged in the salty waves. The seawater was heartbreakingly beautiful that morning, like pale blue glass shattered into shards.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE FIRE
OF CREATION
Beau bent down and did his best to comfort Hermes, though his own nerves were a mess. For an hour, he had searched up and down the riverbanks and trails for Melissa, franticly calling her name. Hermes refused to budge from the spot beneath the cypress tree where Melissa had last been.
“She’s not here,” Beau repeated to the dog. “I’ve looked everywhere.” He resigned himself to the heavy tas
k of finding Melissa’s father and trying to explain what had happened. He knew that Dr. Bùi would find his story unbelievable. In a gamble for more time, he tapped his wristband and called his mother. The holo-screen showed her sitting at her loom.
“Beau? I thought you and Melissa would be back by now. You missed dinner and haven’t answered your wristband.”
“Sorry, Mom, we went for a walk down by the river and lost track of time. Uh, Mom, do you think it’d be all right if Melissa and I stayed out later, maybe caught a movie at the Student Union? There’s a double feature tonight, science fiction flicks.”
“It’s alright with me, mijo, if her father agrees.”
“Okay, Mom. Don’t expect me back till late.”
“Bueno, but doesn’t Melissa have that race in the morning? Are you sure staying out late is a good idea?”
“Don’t worry, Melissa’s a monster. She says she actually races better on less sleep,” he improvised.
Beau contacted Melissa’s father next, striding several yards from the cypress tree where Hermes sat. He worried a few alarmed yips from the dog might signal something was amiss. When Paul Bùi appeared on the screen, Beau took a steadying breath. It was bad enough to fudge on the truth with his mother, but now he had to do the same with Melissa’s father.
“Hey, Dr. Bùi, would it be okay if Melissa and I went to the movies on campus tonight?”
“Sure, Beau. You know you’re welcome to call me Paul.”
“I know, sir, but I like the sound of Dr. Bùi.”
Melissa’s father shrugged good-naturedly and adjusted his wireframe glasses. “Is Melissa there with you now?”
“Uh, she’s at the library picking up her race packet,” Beau lied. “I’m about to go meet her. I told her I’d call you to ask about the movie.”
“Race packet?” Dr. Bùi looked confused.
“She’s running the 5K, the fundraiser for the bee sanctuary tomorrow.”