by Cassie Day
Aunt and the twins hover nearby. Desma keeps one hand against my shoulder. They say nothing.
By morning, the sharks are gone. I speed out of the ruins. No one calls me back.
Kyma’s pebbled shoreline teems with skittering hermit crabs and smooth sea glass. I visited only yesterday. Yet I’m aged months, years, decades.
Is the consuming emptiness grief? Anger? I don’t know. I don’t care to know.
A young octopus sails across the seafloor, waving one arm as if to say chase me. I ignore it and keep moving.
I focus on grains of sand stirred by the waves. The late winter sun warms my back. The sky above is cloudless.
What was I thinking doing this, going exploring? Did I think I’d find joy here?
There’s no joy left.
I should go on land. Visit Bion and the town. I’ll stay until I wither. Would sickness or his father kill me first? At least the company of Bion and the storyteller could comfort me until I join my mother in Nekros, the realm of the dead.
My mother. I reach out with my mind like she’ll meet me halfway. “What will I do without you?”
A simple question. She can’t answer. She’s dead. And oh, how Aunt will try to whisper stories of souls lingering to watch over those they loved in life. They’re meaningless stories.
Stories won’t return her to life. Stories won’t keep me warm in our cave. Stories won’t tend to my hurts or hug me close or wipe away my tears. Stories won’t become a mother.
I SPEND DAYS TRAVELING along Kyma’s shoreline. Fishing boats come and go. Winter thaws to Spring.
Songs travel across the distance. My family calling me home. A pod of whales pass, singing their own joyful songs. I fight the strings stretched taut between us.
I don’t answer.
More days pass. More sung platitudes, more pity, more. And not enough.
The coral reef stretches in hues of yellow, sunset pink, and pale orange. The tiniest of fish linger along the rocky outcroppings created by the coral. One such fish is snatched by a lightning-quick eel. The eel undulates its mouth and throat, chomping down. Speckles along its side catch in the light, flashing purple-blue-black in quick succession.
The other fish group together in a tight knot, darting away without another thought to their fallen comrade.
I didn’t bring my spear. It sits collecting sand along one side of my mother's cave. My cousins will be looking for me. Yet the coral reef beckons. All thoughts of my hunting duties drift away like bits of sand along the seafloor.
A flash of fiery red startles me and I turn, expecting to see Desma. But no, it's only the shimmering sides of another fish.
I wander through the reef. The warmth and colorful sights—all of it calms me. The wild beating of my heart finally slows.
The fisherman with his grabbing hands can’t get me here. Even the most adventurous don't dare sail near coral for fear it’ll tear their boats apart.
At noise from above, I look up. Droplets cascade against the surface. They’re slow at first; a sprinkling of rain creating the barest of undulations against the seawater. But soon the drops become fat beads striking against the surface. The waves, once soothing, churn.
I duck lower, settling on my belly far away from the coral. To grab onto the rough material is to endure deep gouges. The fishermen aren't wrong in their assumptions; it can tear apart a boat as easily as a creature.
My eyelids blink in heavy movements. The waves roll across me, massaging sore muscles. Only a bit of sleep won't hurt after such a tumultuous day. Surely I deserve a nap...
I blink my eyes open. The sea is darker, shadows darkening the reef colors. Stomach dropping, I sit upright. Is it dark from night or the storm?
It doesn’t matter. Sharks will patrol soon enough.
I dart away from the reef to race against the fading light. Stop to breathe only when I’m sheltered in a nook on the outside of the ruins. I peek through a nearby hole. Aunt is settled in the sand with children gathered around her.
A hunting group swims inside. The twins have caught a grand tuna, heaving it between them with a spear in each end. They stop in the center of the ruins, then pose proudly at its head. Meda scrapes out one eyeball with a flourish only to pop it in Iris’ mouth.
The children and pregnant descend, ripping apart skin to reach flesh. My older aunts steadily drain the part of the fish deemed toxic: the guts. They unravel from the tuna in a wave of fresh blood.
I turn away, bile rising in the back of my throat. If they’d caught the tuna weeks earlier—no. Don’t what if. Don’t think.
Desma’s hair glistens bright among the dank ruins filled with dark heads. Beside her, Eudoxia swims with bits of tuna cradled in her palm.
If they speak to one another, I don’t catch it among the chaos. They barely look at one another. They are alone while swimming side-by-side. The oddity hooks something within me. Twisted, sharp, and coveting. Dangerous as a starved eel.
What is it like to focus on someone new? To welcome a friendship into the hole in my heart where my mother once resided?
I look away, pressing forward into the crack to better hear Aunt. Her silver hair catches on a slow wave, undulating in all directions at once. With her back to me, she can’t see me peeking in. The children are too focused to notice their own tails, let alone an interloper.
Mind-speak a whisper, she leans over the children with her wild hair. “Upon the death of his beloved wife, Orpheus became inconsolable. Oh, for what would he do without his beloved? How could he go on without her by his side? Never mind the dead find peace in their afterlives, whatever peace means to them.”
I suck in a sharp inhale. Tears claw at my throat until it aches. Blinking, I hold them inside. I need to leave. My body remains frozen.
She continues, hands gesturing with each sentence. “So it came to be that Orpheus decided he would do anything to retrieve her. And how the muses, beings who whisper in mortal ears, suggested ideas! And one, just one, stuck.”
The children lean in, breath held within their chests. I do the same, riveted stare trained on Aunt.
She pauses. When she speaks next, her mind-speak is impossibly quieter. Her hands gentle in their movements, all sweeping arcs and graceful fingers. “He would do anything. Even if it meant venturing to Hades in the realm of the dead, Nekros. For surely Hades, king of Nekros, would understand! He’d nearly lost his wife Persephone to her goddess mother Demeter.”
The children gasp as one.
Mind reeling, I lean closer until rock bites into my cheek.
“Orpheus ventured down, down, down into Nekros until he came before Hades’ throne. He made his case while the god’s gaze seemed to look into his very soul. And when Orpheus’ breath ran out and his words stopped, what could Hades say? He could see Orpheus’ love for his wife in its purest form. The dead of summer and his own wife taken away to the Olympian Palace at the beginning of spring, his cold heart warmed.”
Another pause. One of the children reaches forward, tugging at Aunt’s scales until she continues with a chuckle. “And so it came to be: Orpheus could bring his wife back to the living.”
She stops and claps. All of us startle. “But! Nothing worth having comes free. Orpheus’ bargain with Hades said he could only have his wife back if he could lead her without looking over his shoulder once on their journey out of Nekros’ depths.”
Bargains, the true currency of the gods. Anyone, mortal or creature, can have anything they want—for a price. Serving the gods for eternity or working in their fields or becoming their lover.
From the old stories, some gods rely on trickery, others on loopholes, and a small set on simple instructions. Hades seems to fall into the last sort.
Aunt twists in a circle. Her wrinkled grin freezes upon seeing me. Skin paling, she swims backward, tumbling into the group of children. They squawk her name, laughing like this is a game.
“Agathe,” she says, her voice thin.
I smile. It
sits stiff upon my face. “Thank you for your story, Aunt.”
Turning, I swim free of the clustered children.
One of them giggles. “But Aunt hasn’t finished yet.”
The others shush her.
The route to the caves brings me past Desma, who’s wandered from the ruin confines. Her eyes catch on mine. I focus on the rain dripping against the surface above. The burn of her attention follows until I’m out of sight.
I sag against the slip-slide of verdant algae coating the outside of my mother’s cave.
A chance to bring my mother back. To bargain with Hades, the god of the dead, is to risk death. I have no true way to garner sympathy from him. No lover lost to death. Yet perhaps he’ll bring my mother back—for a price.
And what will the price be? It doesn’t matter. I’ll do anything, pay anything, for my mother’s return.
Chapter 6
GOOSEBUMPS COVER MY bare body from shoulder to ankle.
Spring has come and with it another year tacked onto my life. Still, the air holds a crisp chill. I watch the gulls flying overhead, bickering among themselves.
To fly so effortlessly must be pure joy. True freedom to go wherever one pleases—across land, sea, and the fathomless Thalassa Ocean.
I shake my head, rattling those wandering thoughts loose. There’s no use imagining. I’ll forever have a fishtail. I’ll be forever chained to the sea that killed my mother. Imagining doesn’t do anything except put longing where it wasn’t before.
I glance at the trail between dunes. Empty. Bion’s surely given up after my absence these weeks. Yet maybe this is good. Without him, there’s no need to explain why I was gone for so long. No need to recount my mother’s death.
I trudge along the sand, grains sticking between my damp toes. The dunes aren’t so frightening when they surround on all sides. The town is not so overwhelming. My hands don’t shake. The cool wind doesn’t make me shiver.
I feel nothing at all.
I stop in front of Bion’s house with the fading picture of a fish. Weeks ago, the yellow paint shined vibrant beneath the sun. Now it’s dimmed by rainstorms and time. I tilt my head, tracing the crude outline of its eye with a fingertip. A goose waddles by, honking to a bird in the distance.
“You’re back!” Bion says, gripping the door frame when he swings free of the house. A chunk of stucco flakes off in his wake.
“Yes,” I say.
He grabs my hands, tugging me into the house. He drags me to stand near the hearth. Rugs replace dirt. The fire flickers invisible fingers of warmth against my skin.
He sprints into another of the rooms, the sound of rustling cloth trailing from the doorway. A muffled exclamation. Then he’s sprinting back, yet another dress in his small hands.
“I’ve already ruined two,” I say with a sigh.
“I give you the ones my mother despises. Her sister gifted her four of them when my parents married. Mother says they’re the roughest wool.” He leans in to whisper. “She breaks out in a rash every time she wears one of them.”
My answering smile is real but no less brittle. “I see.”
He tilts his head, then throws the dress over my head. By the time he’s fastening the pins along my shoulders, his expression has gone soft. “Are you okay?”
I nod, willing my palms to cease sweating. When it doesn’t work, I wipe them on the dress. Don't ask, I say in mind-speak though he can’t hear.
“And your mother, is she all right?” He brightens. “Oh! Did the fennel work?”
Staring into his smiling, excited face, I open my mouth to tell him the truth. Yet instead lies pour free. “She’s doing well. The fennel worked wonders.”
I grasp his hands, bowing over them to show gratitude. I use the moment to blink away tears and compose my crumbling expression. This is a child free of pain and strife. He won’t know of tragedy, not today.
I lift my head, forcing an easy smile onto my lips. “I must thank the storyteller, too.”
Bion nods, brows furrowed but grinning all the same. “Well, let’s go, then. He’ll be happy to see you after so long.”
My smile turns genuine. How long! Weeks must seem years to a child.
“I’ll go alone today. I’d like to test my knowledge of the pathways to the square.”
His brow furrows further, his fair eyebrows nearly meeting to turn into one hairy mass. “They’re called roads. And I can’t let you go alone! What if you get lost?”
“Then I’ll head toward the beach. It’s not so hard with glimpses between buildings and the smell of brine carrying on the air.”
His shoulders droop. He pouts, eyes widening until they glimmer amber-brown in a slant of sunlight. “But I want to go with you.”
I shake my head. “Not today.”
At his expression forming into something fierce enough to promise tears, a tantrum, or both, I continue. “I’ll stop by on my way home, I promise. Perhaps you could show me a game then?”
He brightens, standing tall. Already he reaches the middle of my chest. He’ll be a tall man someday, much like his father. I suppress a shiver at the lingering memory of his imposing father.
But there’s no need to fear. The fishermen will linger offshore longer as it continues to warm. Fish returning to these waters mean bountiful catches well into dusk. Still, my steps will be hurried and swift to return home after meeting with the storyteller, then Bion.
“Deal,” Bion says, hand thrust out between us.
I grasp it, clueless. When he merely shakes it up, then down, I chuckle. This is how he seals a deal? Do all mortals do this?
I leave him behind, ruffling his hair when I pass. He huffs, acting put out, yet can’t hide the smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. He waves me off until I turn a corner toward the square and my view of him is lost.
Kyma is familiar on my third trip. I duck beneath a line of clothes, twist around flocks of geese forever clogging the roads, and keep my head up. I throw my shoulders back.
A few women and one elderly man glance my way but none dare question me. An outsider wouldn’t know these roads well. An outsider would duck their head and hunch their shoulders.
By now, talk of Iris appearing in the square naked will have faded.
Or perhaps not. I step into the square and the women gathered to one side fall into whispers.
A flicker of movement at the corner of my eye. I turn.
The storyteller, waving me over. “You’ve returned!”
Nodding, I step closer until the edge of his frayed rug tickles the tips of my toes.
“And your mother? How is she?” he asks.
Forcing a swallow around the hard lump in my throat, I look away. Tears prick at the corner of my eyes. My vision wobbles. “She and the child died.”
His grin freezes. Then falls. Stare darting to the women on the other side of the square, he frowns. “I understand. Childbirth claims many lives above as well.”
Above.
He knows. How?
I lean forward, clutching a hand in his tunic. I drag him close to my face. A scent sweet yet crisp lingers on his breath.
Would the fennel have worked at all? Or is he in league with the Bion’s father, ready to hurt at any turn?
“How did you know?” I ask.
“I’m a storyteller. Only, sometimes the stories are more fact than another fanciful tale.” He pauses to shake his head, expression darkening into something wild. Hunted. “I no doubt fathered a child with one of your kin in my foolish youth. The sickness seems to afflict all of you the same.”
My mouth gapes open. Close it, my mother’s voice rings in my head. Before the sea drowns you.
I fling the memory away as easily as I fling the storyteller from my grip. He stumbles away, straightening his clothing with steady hands. He pins his direct stare on the women.
Their silence stretches. Then they explode in a flurry of whispers.
I take in his dark hair and darker eyes. Who did he
sire? There’s too many among us with similar features—tracing him to one is near impossible.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
His mouth quirks into a lopsided smile. “Cosmas.”
“Cosmas.”
He’s shown no ill will. He found the fennel, then held Bion before he could foolishly follow me into the sea. I may not trust Cosmas, not truly, but he’s kind enough.
I try again. “Cosmas, do you know anything of the Nekros entrance?”
Oh, I could hedge my questions and skirt around my true intent. But to waste time while my mother is trapped in Nekros’ depths is unforgivable.
Cosmas sighs. That same sweet scent wafts between us. He plucks a plant from the folds of his tunic and chews on the lively green leaves. The scent intensifies. My breathing somehow eases the longer I breathe it in.
“I know enough to guess what you’re after,” he says. “Bargaining with the gods ends badly, Agathe. I don’t need to be a storyteller to tell you that.”
He points to the stone temple looming over the town. “The only one I’ve heard working in favor of a mortal is Medusa’s bargain with Athena, the goddess of wisdom, five years ago.”
Aunt hates the story but tells it regardless. Medusa began mortal; a simple woman devoted to a town temple much like Kyma’s. After being raped, she called upon Athena and bargained for a transformation into a creature of snake hair and a stone-turning gaze so no one could force her ever again.
I force words past my stiff lips. “Do you know anything or not?”
He rubs a hand along his stubbled chin. “You’ve got a determined look about you. It reminds me of someone, though I can’t place who.”
“Cosmas.”
He bats a hand in the air. “I know nothing beyond a number of creatures are said to guard the entrance. You’ll need to go elsewhere for more information.”
Creatures? I stifle a snort of laughter. No creature with ears can resist a siren song.
He sits, groaning as he goes. The rug beneath him is patterned with a crude rendition of waves.