Mythic Journeys

by Paula Guran

  She wants to curl up on herself and make the pain go away; she wants to lie down, even if it’s on slimy stone, and wait until the contractions of her belly have faded, and nothing remains but numbness. But she can’t move. The only way to move is towards the algae-encrusted floor, to grovel before the goddess.

  Gaëtan was right. It was folly to come here, folly to hope to stand against Ahez.

  Françoise’s arms hurt. She’s going to have to yield. There’s no other choice. She—

  Yield.

  She’s a womb, an empty place for the goddess to fill. She has been chosen, picked out from the crowd of tourists on the beach—chosen for the greatest of honors, and now chosen again, to bear a child that will be perfect. She should be glad beyond reason.

  Yield.

  The mask is crawling upwards again—it’s at her shoulder now, flowing towards her neck, towards her face. She knows, without being able to articulate the thought, that when it covers her face she will be lost—drowned forever under the silk.

  Everything is scattering, everything is stripped away by the power of the goddess—the power of the ocean that drowns sailors, of the storm-tossed seas and their irresistible siren song. She can’t hold on to anything. She—has to—

  There’s nothing left at her core now; only a hollow begging to be filled.

  And yet . . . and yet in the silence, in the emptiness of her mind is the song of Ys, and the pattern she drew in the sand; in the silence of her mind, she is kneeling on the beach with the dagger still in her hand, and watching the drowned city rise from the depths to answer her call.

  Slowly, she raises her head, biting her lips not to scream at the pain within her—the pain that sings yield yield yield. Blood floods her mouth with the taste of salt, but she’s staring at the face of the goddess—and the light isn’t blinding, she can see the green eyes dissecting her like an insect. She can—

  She can speak.

  “I—am—not—your toy,” she whispers. Every word is a leaden weight, a stone dragged from some faraway place. “The child—is—not—your—toy.”

  She reaches for the mask—which is almost at her lips. She feels the power coiled within the silk, the insistent beat that is also the rhythm of the waves, and the song that has kept Ys from crumbling under the sea—and it’s within her, pulsing in her belly, singing in her veins and arteries.

  The mask flows towards her outstretched fingers, clings to them. It’s cold and wet, like rain on parched earth. She shakes her hand, and the mask falls onto the ground, and lies there, inert and harmless: an empty husk.

  Like Ys. Like Ahez.

  “You dare—” the goddess hisses. Her radiance is wavering, no longer as strong as it was on Douarnenez. She extends a hand: it’s empty for a split second, and then the wavering image of a white spear fills it. The goddess lunges towards Françoise. Out of sheer instinct, Françoise throws herself aside. Metal grates on the stones to her left—not ten centimeters from where she is.

  Françoise pushes herself upwards, ignoring the nausea that wells up as she abruptly changes positions. The goddess is coming at her again with her spear.

  Françoise is out of breath, and the world won’t stop spinning around her—she can’t avoid the spear forever. The song is deep within her bones, but that doesn’t help—it just adds to her out-of-synch feeling.

  The spear brushes past her, draws a fiery line of pain on her hand. She has to—

  Behind the goddess, Gaëtan still stands frozen. No, not quite, she realizes as she sidesteps once more, stumbling—the nausea rising, rising, screaming at her to lie down and yield. Gaëtan is blinking—staring at her, the eyes straining to make sense of what they see.

  He raises a hand, slowly—too slowly, damn it, she thinks as she throws herself on the floor and rolls over to avoid the spear.

  It buries itself into her shoulder—transfixes her. She’s always thought she would scream if something like that happened, but she doesn’t. She bites her lips so fiercely that blood fills her mouth. Within her, the pattern she drew on the sand is whirling, endlessly.

  The pattern. The dagger. She fumbles for it, tries to extract it from her trouser pocket, but she can’t, she’s pinned to the ground. She should have thought of it earlier—

  “Your death will not be clean,” the goddess says as she withdraws the spear for another thrust.

  Françoise screams, then. Not her pain, but a name. “Gaëtan!”

  His panicked heartbeat is part of the song within her—the nausea, the power shimmering beyond her reach. He’s moving as if through tar, trying to reach her—but he won’t, not in time. There’s not enough time.

  But her scream makes the goddess pause and look up for a split second, as if she’d forgotten something and only just remembered. For a moment only she’s looking away from Françoise, the spear’s point hovering within Françoise’s reach.

  Françoise, giving up on releasing the dagger, grasps the haft of the spear instead. She pulls down, as hard as she can.

  She’s expected some resistance, but the goddess has no weight—barely enough substance to wield the spear, it seems. Françoise’s savage pull topples her onto the floor, felling her like harvested wheat.

  But she’s already struggling to rise—white arms going for Françoise’s throat. At such close quarters, the spear is useless. Françoise makes a sweeping throw with one hand, and hears it clatter on the stones. She fumbles, again, for the dagger—half out of her pocket this time. But there’s no time. No time . . .

  Abruptly, the white arms grow slack. Something enters her field of view—the point of the spear, hovering above her, and then burying itself in the goddess’s shoulder.

  “I don’t think so,” Gaëtan says. His face is pale, his hair disheveled, but his grip on the spear’s haft doesn’t waver.

  Françoise rolls away from the goddess, heaving—there’s bile in her throat, but she can’t even vomit. She finally has her dagger out, but it doesn’t seem like she will need it.

  Doesn’t seem . . .

  The goddess hisses like a stricken cat. She twists away, and the spear slides out of her wound as easily as from water. Then, before Gaetan can react, she jumps upwards—both arms extended towards his face.

  The spear clatters on the ground. Françoise stifles the scream that rises in her and runs, her ribs burning. She’s going to be too late—she can’t possibly—

  She’s almost there, but the goddess’s arms are already closing around Gaëtan’s throat. There’s no choice. There never was any choice.

  Françoise throws the dagger.

  She sees everything that happens next take place in slow motion: the dagger, covering the last few hand-spans that separate Françoise from the goddess’s back—the hilt, slowly starting to flip upwards—the blade, burying itself at an angle into the bare white skin—blood, blossoming from the wound like an obscene fountain.

  The goddess falls, drawing Gaëtan down with her. Françoise, unable to contain herself anymore, screams, and her voice echoes under the vast ceiling of the throne room.

  Nothing moves. Then the goddess’s body rolls aside, and Gaëtan stands up, shaking. Red welts cover his throat, and he is breathing heavily—but he looks fine. He’s alive.

  “Françoise?”

  She’s unable to voice her relief. Beside him, the goddess’s body is wrinkled and already crumbling into dust—leaving only the dagger, glinting with drowned light.

  Within her, the symphony is rising to a pitch—the baby’s heart, her own, mingling in their frantic beat. She hears a voice whispering, The princess is dead. Ys is dead. Who shall rule on Ahez’s throne?

  Once more she’s lifted into that timeless place of the beach, with her pattern shining in moonlight: every street of Ys drawn in painstaking detail.

  At the center of the city, in the palace, is its heart, but it’s not beating as it should. Its valves and veins are too narrow, and not pumping enough blood—it cannot stave off the rot nor keep the
sea from eating at the skeletons, but neither will it let the city die.

  And it’s her baby’s heart, too—the two inextricably tied, the drowned city, and the baby who should have been its heir.

  She has a choice, she sees: she can try to repair the heart, to widen the arteries to let the blood in—perhaps Gaëtan could help, he’s a doctor, after all. She can draw new pathways for the blood, with the same precision as a blueprint—and hope they will be enough.

  She wants the baby to live—she wants her five months of pregnancy, her loss of Stéphane, not to have been for nothing, not to have been a cruel jest by someone who’s forgotten what it was to be human.

  But there are skeletons in the streets of Ys: crabs and shells scuttling on the paved stones, kelp covering the frescoed walls, and in the center of the city, in the throne room, the dais is rotten—to the core.

  She hears the heartbeat within her, the blood ebbing and flowing in her womb, and she knows, with absolute certainty, that it will not be enough. That she has to let go.

  She doesn’t want to. It would be like yielding—did she go all that way for nothing?

  But this isn’t about her—there’s nothing she can offer Ys, or the baby.

  She closes her eyes and sees the pattern splayed on the ground—and the heart at the center.

  And in her mind she takes up the dagger, and drives up to the hilt into the pattern.

  There’s a scream, deep within her—tendrils of pain twisting within her womb. The pattern contorts and wavers—and it’s disappearing, burning away like a piece of paper given to the flames.

  She’s back in her body—she’s fallen to her knees on the floor, both hands going to her belly as if she could contain the pain. But of course she can’t.

  Around her, the walls of the palace are shaking. “Françoise, we have to get out of there!” Gaëtan says.

  She struggles to speak through a haze of pain. “I—”

  Gaëtan’s hands drag her upwards, force her to stand. “Come on,” he says. “Come on.”

  She stumbles on, leaning on his shoulder—through the kelp-encrusted corridors, through the deserted streets and the ruined buildings that are now collapsing. One step after another—one foot in front of the other, and she will not think of the pain in her belly, of the heartbeat within her that grows fainter and fainter with every step.

  She will not think.

  They’re out of Ys, standing on the beach at Douarnenez with the stars shining above. The drowned city shivers and shakes and crumbles, and the sea is rising—rising once more to reclaim it.

  Then there’s nothing left of Ys, only the silvery surface of the ocean, and the waves lapping at their feet. Between Françoise’s legs, something wet and sticky is dripping—and she knows what it has to be.

  Gaëtan is looking at the sea; Françoise, shaking, has not the strength to do more than lean on his shoulder. She stares ahead, at the blurry stars, willing herself not to cry, not to mourn.

  “You okay?” Gaëtan asks.

  She shrugs. “Not sure yet,” she says. “Come on. Let’s go home and grab some sleep.”

  Later, there’ll be time for words: time to explain, time to heal and rebuild. But for now, there is nothing left but silence within her—only one heartbeat she can hear, and it’s her own.

  I’ll be okay, she thinks, blinking furiously, as they walk back to Gaëtan’s car. Overhead, the stars are fading—a prelude to sunrise. I’ll be okay.

  But her womb is empty; and in her mind is the song of her unborn son, an endless lament for all that was lost.

  “THE GORGON”

  TANITH LEE

  The small island, which lay off the larger island of Daphaeu, obviously contained a secret of some sort, and, day by day, and particularly night by night, began to exert an influence on me, so that I must find it out.

  Daphaeu itself (or more correctly herself, for she was a female country, voluptuous and cruel by turns in the true antique fashion of the Goddess) was hardly enormous. A couple of roads, a tangle of sheep tracks, a precarious, escalating village, rocks and hillsides thatched by blistered grass. All of which overhung an extraordinary sea, unlike any sea which I have encountered elsewhere in Greece. Water which might be mistaken for blueness from a distance, but which, from the harbor or the multitude of caves and coves that undermined the island, revealed itself a clear and succulent green, like milky limes or the bottle glass of certain spirits.

  On my first morning, having come on to the natural terrace (the only recommendation of the hovel-like accommodation) to look over this strange green ocean, I saw the smaller island, lying like a little boat of land moored just wide of Daphaeu’s three hills. The day was clear, the water frilled with white where it hit the fangs in the interstices below the terrace. About the smaller island, barely a ruffle showed. It seemed to glide up from the sea, smooth as mirror. The little island was verdant, also. Unlike Daphaeu’s limited stands of stone pine, cypress, and cedar, the smaller sister was clouded by a still, lambent haze of foliage that looked to be woods. Visions of groves, springs, a ruined temple, a statue of Pan playing the panpipes forever in some glade—where only yesterday, it might seem, a thin column of aromatic smoke had gone up—these images were enough, fancifully, to draw me into inquiries about how the small island might be reached. And when my inquiries met first with a polite bevy of excuses, next with a refusal, last with a blank wall of silence, as if whoever I mentioned the little island to had gone temporarily deaf or mad, I became, of course, insatiable to get to it, to find out what odd superstitious thing kept these people away. Naturally, the Daphaeui were not friendly to me at any time beyond the false friendship one anticipates extended to a man of another nationality and clime, who can be relied on to pay his bills, perhaps allow himself to be overcharged, even made a downright monkey of in order to preserve goodwill. In the normal run of things, I could have had anything I wanted in exchange for a pack of local lies, a broad local smile, and a broader local price. That I could not get to the little island puzzled me. I tried money and I tried barter. I even, in a reckless moment, probably knowing I would not succeed, offered Pitos, one of the younger fishermen, the gold and onyx ring he coveted. My sister had made it for me, the faithful copy of an intaglio belonging to the House of Borgia, no less. Generally, Pitos could not pass the time of day with me without mentioning the ring, adding something in the nature of: “If ever you want a great service, any great service, I will do it for that ring.” I half believe he would have stolen or murdered for it, certainly shared the bed with me. But he would not, apparently, even for the Borgia ring, take me to the little island.

  “You think too much of foolish things,” he said to me. “For a big writer, that is not good.”

  I ignored the humorous aspect of “big,” equally inappropriate in the sense of height, girth, or fame. Pitos’s English was fine, and when he slipped into mild inaccuracies, it was likely to be a decoy.

  “You’re wrong, Pitos. That island has a story in it somewhere. I’d take a bet on it.”

  “No fish today,” said Pitos. “Why you think that is?”

  I refrained from inventively telling him I had seen giant swordfish leaping from the shallows by the smaller island.

  I found I was prowling Daphaeu, but only on the one side, the side where I would get a view—or views—of her sister. I would climb down into the welter of coves and smashed emerald water to look across at her. I would climb up and stand, leaning on the sunblasted walls of a crumbling church, and look at the small island. At night, crouched over a bottle of wine, a scatter of manuscript, moths falling like rain in the oil lamp, my stare stayed fixed on the small island, which, as the moon came up, would seem turned to silver or to some older metal, Nemean metal perhaps, sloughed from the moon herself.

  Curiosity accounts for much of this, and contra-suggestiveness. But the influence I presently began to feel, that I cannot account for exactly. Maybe it was only the writer’s desire to fantasize rathe
r than to work. But each time I reached for the manuscript I would experience a sort of distraction, a sort of calling—uncanny, poignant, like nostalgia, though for a place I had never visited.

  I am very bad at recollecting my dreams, but one or twice, just before sunrise, I had a suspicion I had dreamed of the island. Of walking there, hearing its inner waters, the leaves brushing my hands and face.

  Two weeks went by, and precious little had been done in the line of work. And I had come to Daphaeu with the sole intention of working. The year before, I had accomplished so much in a month of similar islands—or had they been similar?—that I had looked for results of some magnitude. In all of fourteen days I must have squeezed out two thousand words, and most of those dreary enough that the only covers they would ever get between would be those of the trash can. And yet it was not that I could not produce work, it was that I knew, with blind and damnable certainty, that the work I needed to be doing sprang from that spoonful of island.

  The first day of the third week I had been swimming in the calm stretch of sea west of the harbor and had emerged to sun myself and smoke on the parched hot shore. Presently Pitos appeared, having scented my cigarettes. Surgical and government health warnings have not yet penetrated to spots like Daphaeu, where filtered tobacco continues to symbolize Hollywood or some other amorphous, anachronistic surrealism still hankered after and long vanished from the real world beyond. Once Pitos had acquired his cigarette, he sprawled down on the dry grass, grinned, indicated the Borgia ring, and mentioned a beautiful cousin of his, whether male or female I cannot be sure. After this had been cleared out of the way, I said to him, “You know how the currents run. I was thinking of a slightly more adventurous swim. But I’d like your advice.”

  Pitos glanced at me warily. I had had the plan as I lazed in the velvet water. Pitos was already starting to guess it.

  “Currents are very dangerous. Not to be trusted, except by harbor.”