The Korinniad

by A. K. Caggiano

  Her friend turned to her with a smile. “I cannot promise you anything, I would never speak for the gods, but I will continue to pray for you, my friend.”

  Korinna looked down at her hand, then back up to the ceiling once more. “Thanks.”

  This is terribly blasphemous, you know.

  Oh, shit, I forgot about you! What do you think so far?

  I think you might end up in Tartarus.

  Just wait, we’ll get there.

  CHAPTER IV

  By the time Helios’s chariot had dipped over the horizon, Korinna had put the prayer out of her mind. The shop was swept, the shutters closed, and she’d even found an ill-shaped urn to practice on by candlelight up in her loft. Eventually sleep came fast and hard, and Korinna was taken by a rare but familiar mortal slumber from which, if one were woken abruptly, one’s mind would put aside all sense and previous knowledge and become the embodiment of panic. This concept was completely lost on gods, of course.

  Korinna rarely woke before Eos spread her rosy fingers across the sky, but she found herself suddenly roused before piercing daylight shone in on her through the cracks in the shutters. Blinking into the soft gray of early morning, she rolled to her back and pushed up onto her elbows. The figure of a man stood at the foot of her mat, fists on hips, chin tilted upward. For a moment, she thought Alanis had somehow moved a statue up into her loft for storage in the middle of the night until its eyes blinked. “Hail, Mortal! I am—”

  Korinna’s scream caught in her throat as she bolted upward then immediately fell with a bang onto the floor again, tangled in her sheet. She was up again in a second, taking a few twisted hops until she finally freed a foot and stepped forward to run. Unfortunately, there was nothing beyond the short edge of the loft for her feet to land on.

  A tiny shriek escaped her lips as she plummeted over the edge. She reached out for anything to stop herself, or at least to brace against the tile floor, and she flailed her limbs about until she realized she was falling for far too long.

  She was floating—no, suspended. Below her lay the expanse of the workshop, empty seats and half-finished projects serenely illuminated by the pink glow of morning, and when she looked up, she saw the stranger, his face inches from hers. Frozen, she stared at him, his features still statuesque even as he moved. His dark brows were knitted over heavily-lashed, blue eyes, and a long, straight nose lead down to a cleft chin. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear over the sound of blood rushing past her ears.

  Then, she was moving, slowly, and she felt the boards of the loft below her feet. His hands were steadying her, but the moment she realized she had solid footing she tore herself away. Feathers fanned out behind the man, catching the first of dawn’s light and glimmering in golden hues. “You,” she stammered, stepping back, her voice cracking as she finally managed words, “You have wings.”

  He flapped them once before folding them away. “Yes.” His voice was bright and clear like the coastline on a cloudless day.

  “By Zeus, what are you?”

  “Ah!” He cleared his throat and placed his fists back on his hips. “Hail, Mortal! I am of the many-numbered—”

  “Wait.” She held her hand up and he crumpled into himself a little. “Did you just call me mortal?”

  “Indeed, for I am of the many-numbered Erotes, demigo-”

  “Oh, gods!” Korinna threw up her hands and fell back onto her sleeping mat with a groan.

  “Very good!” Korinna could hear him, a cloyingly excited tone even as she pulled her sheet up over her face. “Of the many-numbered Erotes, demigods of eros and agape, here to—”

  “Excuse me?” Korinna ripped the blanket off of her again. “What did you just say?”

  His face had changed, decidedly more annoyed now, and he’d folded his arms before him. He waited and sighed, “Are you sure you want me to go on?”

  “Just the bit about being god of what exactly?”

  “Well, demigod, but”—he peered to the ceiling as if he could see beyond it—“Eros and agape, passion and true love. And I am here, Mortal, to usher love into your heart.”

  “Whoa!” Korinna sat up, holding the sheet against her chest, her eyes wide. “I didn’t ask for…well, anything like that! I don’t think so anyway. And certainly not true love.” The words tasted ridiculous in her mouth.

  “I, uh,”—he sputtered out half a laugh—“do not understand. Everyone wants to find their true love!”

  Korinna watched as he nodded at her, encouraging her to agree, but she only shook her head. “I just want to get laid.”

  His mouth fell open, then he began to laugh cautiously. “Of course, mortals often say things they do not mean in an attempt at humor.” He laughed more heartily. “Very good.”

  “Me? I hope you’re the one who’s kidding. Who’s got time to wait around for something as improbable as”—she bat her eyelashes and stuck out her tongue—“true love? I’ve got priorities.”

  “What could possibly be more important than true love?” He was smirking now, and she found it particularly annoying.

  “Oh, I don’t know, just my life, is all.”

  “Your life? I do not understand. Many of your kind forfeit their lives in search of, and in grief over, true love.”

  Korinna balked, “Is that supposed to make it more appealing?”

  The demigod looked as though his dog had been run over by her cart. Korinna almost felt bad for him, but the feeling fled when he opened his mouth again. “Love is the force that holds together our world, and it is the duty of the many-numbered Erotes including myself, Ni—”

  “Let me stop you there, buddy.” Korinna again held out her hand. “I don’t doubt that you believe in all of this love business—clearly, it’s your job—but I just don’t really buy all that mushy stuff.”

  “It is not…mushy.” He searched the floorboards for a moment then huffed. “Are you saying you don’t believe in love?”

  Korinna shrugged. “I guess?”

  “But…but love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love!” When she did nothing but stare back at him, he took a breath, blinking slowly and holding his hands out before him. “What matters, Mortal, is what is in your heart. Search it, deeply and truly, and you will find a longing there for a partner.” He placed a hand on his chest and closed his eyes, a smile playing on the corners of his lips. “You will wish to find someone with whom you will share your life, to find your adelphi psychi.”

  Korinna cocked her head. “My what?”

  “Your adelphi psychi is your soul mate, Mortal. Have I not got the language right?”

  She grumbled back, “No, it all sounds Greek to me.” The way he spoke about this whole love thing would have made it sound nice if it didn’t already sound completely idiotic. “Look, I’m sure that works for some people, but I don’t exactly have the time to search all over Gaia for one person. I’ve only got til the new moon to rid myself of my virginity, so that’s why I, uh, kinda prayed to whoever was listening for some help. It was all Simone’s idea anyway, and I didn’t know this is what she had in mind. I just don’t think you can help me.”

  The demigod puffed out his chest, his voice dropping into an authoritative baritone. “I have been tasked with assisting you in finding your true love, and so true love I will find you. If we have but until Selene renews herself in the night sky, so be it. The gods have a plan and—”

  “Shut up!” Korinna jumped up from her mat and threw her hand over his mouth, leaning out over the edge of the loft. Noises below told her that Alanis had made her way into the pottery barn from her home across the field. If the woman didn’t see Korinna about and working, she would be on her way up into the loft to shout at her any moment. Her heart fluttered—she was late, dressed in her night chemise, and there was a man with her. “Perfect!”

  Korinna grabbed the demigod by his shoulders intending to pull him back toward her sleeping mat, but instead was
too surprised by how, well, human he felt. Not every mortal can pinpoint the exact moment they truly understand their predicament, and even rarer still to realize it as it is happening, but with fingers gripping onto hard biceps and looking up into a chiseled jaw and brilliant blue eyes Korinna suddenly felt how heavily the word virgin lay on her. She shook her head then and yanked him back away from the edge of the loft.

  The demigod stiffened, but not in any way that would help matters. “What are you doing?”

  “We need to look convincing!”

  She managed to knock him down fully and tried to scramble on top of him, but he quickly rolled her off and held her at arm’s length. “Excuse me?”

  From below, the ladder to the loft creaked, and Korinna dropped her voice to a whisper, “If Alanis thinks I got busy with a god, she will never keep her mouth shut about it. The whole village will find out, and then I’m off the sacrificial hook!”

  “You want me to…” He pointed at himself, then at her, bewildered.

  “No, I just want to pretend like we did.” She mussed up her hair. “Then I will be safe, and your job can be done. I’ll figure out the no half-god baby thing when the time comes.”

  “Korinna!” Alanis’s voice boomed from the edge, morning’s light now streaming in and haloing from behind her bulbous head.

  Korinna gasped, rolling onto her back dramatically and slapping her chest in mock shock. “Oh, Alanis, I can’t believe you’re seeing me like this!”

  “Lazing about?” Alanis huffed, “No different than any other morning. Now get your ass downstairs before I throw you off this ladder myself!”

  Korinna sat up, looking around, but the demigod had vanished.

  Alanis stomped back down, muttering about generations and youths, and Korinna jumped to her feet, yanking up the sheets in search of the man she had just most definitely been touching seconds earlier. “What in Hades?” She dropped to her knees and stuffed a hand into the straw under her mat. “That little shit! Where are you…you…”

  “Nikeros.”

  Korinna jumped, the voice coming from behind her though he’d not been there a moment before. When she turned, she expected to see his tall figure, but instead, a cat stood at her feet, its coat the same deep brown of his hair, and peered up at her with light blue eyes. “That is my name, Mortal. Not that you let me say earlier.”

  CHAPTER V

  “So let me see if I understand this.” Korinna marched across the field behind the pottery barn laden with a pile of wood, a clay pot, and a few small stones. It appeared she was talking to herself since everybody knew cats couldn’t talk back, but still the feline at her side seemed to be paying attention. “You’re supposed to help me find my soul mate?”

  The cat who had once been a man but was actually a demigod gave a little trill.

  “And my soul mate just happens to be one of three men that the gods have chosen?”

  “Correct.”

  Far from other structures and prying ears, Korinna dropped her pitch bark on top of an already sooty spot. “And these guys, they’re not here in Zafolas?”

  The cat sat across the pit from her and shook its head. “One is a prince, actually!”

  Korinna glanced down at her tunic, stained with pink blotches and tattered at the hem. “And they’re supposed to go for me?”

  “I can help with that.” Nikeros winked at her.

  She swallowed. “How exactly?”

  “I am an Erote,” he announced, puffing out his chest, “My kind have the keen ability to persuade beings to be open to the opportunity of love from any partner.”

  Korinna knelt before her materials and held a stone in each hand, about to knock them together, but stopped. “You know that doesn’t exactly sound…okay, right?”

  He tilted his head. “Uh, well, Erotes can also sense when our charges are feeling deep, true love themselves. Sort of an aura that only we can see.”

  “What good is that?” She cracked the stones together, and a spark popped to life, but didn’t quite catch.

  “Then we can be sure we have correctly done our job.” He nodded quickly. “We bring together two mortals, give them a little encouragement, and if both of their auras glow it is a match!”

  She squinted at him over her little mound of kindling then rolled her eyes. “And you don’t know why the gods are so interested in my plight.”

  “The gods have Enigmatic Methods,” Nikeros’s muzzle contorted to say as he dipped his head down to see what she was doing, “But they are in some sort of competition as usual.”

  The dry grass Korinna had packed around the base of the wood pile finally began to smoke. She leaned down and gently blew on the kindling. The cat cocked his head too, and she met his eyes for a minute before grimacing and focusing back on the growing flame.

  “What is this?” he asked quietly.

  She saw the flame glint in his eye as he watched it. “Fire,” she said as if he should have known, but when he did not acknowledge how terribly sarcastic her answer had been, she decided to elaborate, “I’m making the black.” She sat up and wiped her hands down her tunic, sooty marks left down her thighs.

  The cat sat up too. “What is the black?”

  “Paint,” she told him, watching the pitch heat up in the pot. It was a boring process, but she’d never actually had company during it, so despite that she’d been trying to shoo the cat away all day, she decided instead to explain to him. It was likely the form he’d taken, she told herself, but with his ears forward, he seemed to really be listening to her, and even watching intently as she stirred. He said very little as she told him about other colors and the process of making them, a little about clay and how hot the kiln got, until she decided she was sick of how nice he was pretending to be. “Listen, Niko, was it? I don’t want you to waste any more of your time, okay? This isn’t really going to work.”

  He stood as if it would make his cat body any taller. “But it simply must.”

  Korinna collected her supplies and kicked at the last of the flames, putting them out. She turned away from the cat and trod back toward the barn, a frown permanently stretched across her face. She quickened her pace, and though it was easy for the cat to keep up, she was determined to ignore him. Her day would go on as normal, she would make some paints, she would clean up and serve the others, she would beg for some time to show Alanis her skills, she would avoid pinches and sideways glances from the oldest of the men, and she would go to bed exhausted and, for the first time it occurred to her, alone. Then she would wake the next morning and repeat. And hopefully somewhere in there she would find a solution, but there would never be enough time to do so with some demigod flitting around her trying to find her true love.

  In her haste, Korinna almost didn’t notice the guard entering the shop, but the scarlet of his cape caught her eye just before she turned inside. She caught herself on the threshold and slipped silently back out through the archway, pressing herself against the exterior wall.

  “Is something wrong?” Nikeros asked in a too-loud human voice, but the frantic face she made at him was enough to silence him.

  With her arms heavily laden, she hunched over and scurried against the wall of the pottery barn, around a corner, and to one of the side windows. Alanis’s voice was at least an octave higher inside. “Well, hello there, General, how can I help you today?”

  Korinna’s eyes opened wide as she hugged her wares; it indeed was General Archelaus.

  “Just making rounds.” His imposing voice was more lax than usual.

  Nikeros tilted his head as he looked up at her, bending an ear toward the sounds inside. Korinna raised a finger to her mouth, and he nodded in understanding.

  “No riffraff around these parts,” Alanis tittered, “Besides the usual.”

  Korinna made a face at the cat then carefully set down the pot, slipping onto her knees so that she could peer over the sill. Inside, she could see the general pacing the length of the barn, surveying the men w
orking with his arms clasped behind his back, Alanis shuffling beside him with a simpering look. “Lovely operation you have here,” he was saying, “How many do you need to run it?”

  Alanis explained how the potters and painters were employed, sidling up closer to him as he turned and headed back for the front. Korinna ducked down again, but he hadn’t noticed her with Alanis blocking his view, going on about how she manages the place all by herself, “with of course the help of one servant girl.”

  The general stopped and rubbed his chin, glancing about. “And where might she be?”

  “Oh, who knows,” Alanis giggled waving a hand, “Not around to bother us.”

  “So”—he narrowed his eyes—“easily replaceable then.” It wasn’t a question.

  Korinna dropped away from the window and pressed her back against the wall again, her eyes finding the cat’s. Wide and soulful, they looked back at her, but he didn’t say a word as they listened to Archelaus and Alanis exchange strained pleasantries until the general pulled himself away and finally left the pottery barn. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she felt like she’d eaten some shellfish that had spent too long in the sun.

  She glanced down at the pot of newly made black. She could continue on like this, she knew, but only until the day she would wake to a soldier at the door and Alanis wailing about reparations for her lost servant. Looking back at the cat, she sighed, “So tell me more about this prince.”

  CHAPTER VI

  There was a cart waiting at the bottom of the hill, Alanis had said in a sort of daze, and Korinna was to go with the man there. The cat that scurried along at her heels confirmed it was his doing, and she was relieved it was unrelated to the general’s earlier visit. When she realized Nikeros had done something to Alanis, she asked if the woman would return to her usual combative self. Nikeros had huffed in the way that cats do. “I think she will eventually be all right, perhaps in a moon or so.” Korinna was unsure whether to thank or chastise him.