A Sea of Sorrow

by Libbie Hawker

That night Aglaope soared over the moon-silver sea, the cool night air beneath her wings and the stars bright and friendly above, welcoming her home. She dipped and dove and spiraled through the sky in ever-broadening circles, until she found herself at Circe’s shores. Fire and lamplight flickered through her wide palace windows, and bursts of laughter drifted out, so loud they drowned even the pounding heartbeat of the surf.

  It was only a dream, she knew, flaring her wings and dropping effortlessly to the earth. It was only a dream, but she could not stop herself from peeking through the open windows, from placing her hand upon the smooth stone wall and leaning in, searching for a glimpse of the hero and the god she longed for.

  There were so many men, a handful of handmaidens floating between them, pouring wine and smiling. So many, and how could she know for certain who might be Akheloios in such a shining mob? And the more she searched, the more her mouth began to water, her stomach grumbling and growling at the succulent meats, the steaming loaves of bread and glistening honeyed fruits and nuts, left half-eaten and abandoned upon pushed-away plates. Food enough to feed her family for an entire season, all prepared and put out in one wasteful meal.

  Surely this was some cruel trick of Circe’s, to draw her here while she dreamed. To give her a taste of freedom and flight, only to show her the feast of food and supplies that the witch would never share. This was her punishment, all the more powerful for the delay, waiting until there was nothing left of the falcon to quiet the hunger in her belly when she woke.

  Circe herself was unmistakable, of course, lying upon a golden couch, her gown a floating gauze, as though she had clothed herself in clouds. A man’s head rested in her lap—a dark, stocky fellow, worn to weathered lines by sorrow and grief, with a neatly trimmed dark beard, shot through with the barest hint of white. Of all the men in her hall, why Circe had chosen such a strange one, lacking all grace, Aglaope did not know.

  But then the man looked up, sharp eyes locking upon hers, widening in surprise, and she felt as though a spear had flown through her heart, pinning her to the ground. Akheloios. It had to be. For who else but a god could see her so clearly in a dream?

  He lifted his head from Circe’s lap and rose, his movement as fluid as the sea despite his odd size, and Aglaope startled, her wings flaring wide, and sweeping down hard against the earth, launching her into the sky.

  “Odysseus?” Circe’s voice rose sharp and musical above the ruffle of Aglaope’s wings and the rush of wind in her ears.

  Odysseus-Akheloios, Aglaope thought, her chest tight with the knowledge—the gift of this dream, granted by the gods, by her father.

  And when she glanced back down again, soaring high, she knew he watched her fly with pride.

  * * *

  IV

  “I saw him,” Aglaope murmured, keeping her voice too low for her mother to hear. Dawn had not reached her rosy fingers across the sky quite yet, but Aglaope did not have long before the sun called her to the spire again. “Odysseus-Akheloios, feasting in Circe’s hall with all his men. The gods granted me a vision.”

  “Ahh,” her grandmother sighed. How long she had been awake before Aglaope had risen, she was not certain, but surely Thelxiope had not slept much or well. “What did he look like, child?”

  “Like nothing I would have imagined,” she admitted, ducking her head. “I expected someone tall and lithe, shining and glorious but he—he was brown as his ship and built wide. Like an immense amphora, low and solid and thick. I confess, I did not see why Circe had chosen him. But then he looked at me. Through me. And I knew. I knew, Grandmother. He will come and sweep us all away from this wasteland, you will see. Now that he has seen me, I cannot imagine Circe can hold him long.”

  “And how long has she held him already?” Thelxiope wondered.

  “Long enough that he is clearly bored of her,” Aglaope said. “His expression was as dull as rock until he caught sight of me, peeking through the window. And then he rushed to his feet, pushing her away as if he cared not at all! If you had only seen his face, then. The brilliance of it. He could only have been a god.”

  “Odysseus-Akheloios,” her grandmother breathed. “A fine name.”

  “I am certain I could grow to love him, even if he is not so fine when he is still. But the river’s beauty and strength is in its movement, is it not? That is how the sweet water cuts its way across the land and finds the sea—by rushing, fast and furious. And it is only fitting that Odysseus-Akheloios would be the same.”

  Thelxiope smiled. “What do you know of the river’s power, girl, born upon this rock?”

  Aglaope flushed. “Akheloios told us it was so, did he not? And we have seen the power of the rains, the channels it has carved even upon our own island.”

  “Perhaps that is so,” she agreed. “Perhaps it will all be as you say. I can only pray as much. But be careful of getting your hopes too high, my dear one. No matter how constant our prayers, the gods must have their way.”

  “You sounds like Mother, now,” Aglaope said, drawing back. “Surely you at least must understand. This is where I find my joy, my nourishment, as she would say. Not in song, as she does, the work of my voice, the fetter that binds me to that spire all day long. No. But in the hope for something better that might come. The dream of a future that is not spent singing, luring men and ships to their doom. Surely you cannot begrudge me that.”

  “No, Aglaope, no. Of course I do not. I only fear that should it not come to pass, you will grow bitter and lost. And who will console you, when I am gone?”

  “Then you cannot go,” she said, grasping her grandmother’s hand. “Only stay with us a while longer, and I will bring you with me when Odysseus-Akheloios comes. We will travel together to the rich lands beyond and eat at banquets until our stomachs burst!”

  Thelxiope smiled faintly, her gaze shifting to the sky, ever lighter. “Only sing for me, girl, and I will be well-satisfied.”

  Aglaope sighed, and rose to her feet. Dawn had arrived, and if she dallied any longer, even for her grandmother’s sake, she would surely catch the sharp edge of her mother’s tongue—a miserable way to begin, and bound only to upset them both, and leave her throat tight with anger and emotion, and her voice hoarse by sunset.

  “Enjoy your rest,” Aglaope said. “And save your strength until I return again.”

  Anthousa returned that day, stiff with fury, with a cast of falcons, tossed at once into the sky and scattering the seabirds far and wide. The falcons began to dive upon them, then, knocking the poor, terrified creatures from the air, and hauling their bodies back to the handmaiden’s skiff. She crooned and praised them, offering choice bits of meat for every seabird dropped at her feet, and Aglaope had no choice but to watch it all, her voice going thin and reedy as she sang her song.

  Akheloios, come to me...

  “Sing, Siren,” Anthousa called out. “Sing for the birds you’ll never see again. It will be a long winter for you here upon this rock without their eggs and no ships at all to feed you.”

  “Do you take such delight in the death of an old woman?” Aglaope called back. “One who had nothing to do with the loss of your lady’s ship, but suffers for it all the same.”

  “Does she not sing?” the handmaiden said. “Has she not sat upon that spire in her turn? And worse, birthed the woman who gave life to you!”

  “I’ll kill your falcons just as I did the last,” Aglaope shouted, her song forgotten now.

  “And I will bring more again on the morrow, if you should! Perhaps they will take the eyes from your grandmother while you sing upon your spire.”

  Aglaope hissed, fumbling for her sling and the small hoard of rocks she’d collected after her last success. But her arm was not so steady this time, her aim not as sharp, whatever gift the gods had given had been stolen away as if it had never been. Every stone she threw missed, each one more wildly than the last, and the falcons circled above her head, ready to dive at Anthousa’s sign.

  But t
he woman only laughed, waving the falcons back to their true work. “My lady would not wish me to give you so easy a death as a fall,” she said. “And why should I risk her falcons on you when you’ll be too weak to fight them soon enough. When the day comes that you are too tired to even raise your arm, your body skin and bone, then I will let them feast upon your liver, upon your eyes and your innards.”

  “I will throw myself into the sea before it comes to that,” she swore, tears of frustration burning behind her eyes.

  “So you say, now,” Anthousa responded. “Only wait, Siren. Only wait.”

  She whistled sharply to her falcons and the birds wheeled up, up, up. Aglaope held her breath, watching them dance and soar—and then dive. Not for the seabirds this time, for they flew straight through the flock without so much as clipping one. But down, down toward the thin line of smoke from the fire, where her grandmother lay, weak as a newborn chick just struggled from its egg.

  “No!” Aglaope cried, hurrying down from the spire, desperate now. “Akheloios, save us! Save her!”

  She slipped and slid, scraping her palms upon the rock, her nails breaking when she scrabbled for the handholds she had missed. When she finally reached the ground, she ran on trembling legs, racing for the fire, to her grandmother’s side.

  The birds tore at Thelxiope, at her face and eyes and throat, blood upon sharp hooked beaks and breasts and talons. So many she could barely see her grandmother’s body between their half-spread wings and bobbing, flesh-tearing heads.

  “No,” she said again, falling to her knees upon the furs, and scattering the falcons with her sudden arrival.

  Too late to do any good.

  Too late to stop them.

  The tears came then, hot and burning down her cheeks as she took her grandmother’s thin and bloodied hand. She could not bear to look upon her face. To see the torn flaps of skin, the dark, leaking gashes where she’d once had eyes.

  One last, labored breath, and Thelxiope was gone.

  Aglaope did not climb back up the spire that day, and even though she did not sing, her voice was raw and broken by nightfall.

  “You must stop this,” her mother said. “This weeping and wailing—it will leave you without a voice at all if you are not careful. Grieve as you must, but do not carry on. Thelxiope would not have wanted you to ruin yourself in such a manner. Not for her sake.”

  They had wept together. Clinging and crying, at first. But Ligeia had torn herself away before long, swallowing her tears and her grief while she washed and prepared the corpse. Not for the pyre or the tomb, as they did upon the mainland or perhaps might have risked during a time of plenty even on their small sad island, but rather for the food and meat it might provide them through the long, looming winter.

  “Will you help me?” Ligeia had asked, and Aglaope had done so—her tears mixing with the blood as they carved and cut flesh from bone, most to be hung and smoked in the cave, and some to be cooked for Thelxiope’s funeral feast. One thigh bone, and a share of the hard cartilage would be given up to the gods with desperate prayers for good, clean rains and the hope of an early spring with a multitude of ships.

  But Aglaope felt sick.

  “It is my fault,” she told her mother, the words hoarse. “It is my fault she has died this way, today.”

  Ligeia sighed, not lifting her gaze from her careful work—they could ill afford to waste even a morsel of flesh with no other supplies to see them through the winter. “The fates alone choose our time, Aglaope. And if not even the gods can stop them, how could you?”

  “I taunted her. Anthousa. I threw stones at her birds. It was not the fates who reached out to steal her breath, Mama. It was Circe’s falcons. Circe’s handmaid.”

  “Then she has done us a favor, unwitting though she is,” Ligeia said, her tone sharpening. “Thelxiope will provide us with the strength we need, now, to see us through, and with one less body to feed we will survive that much longer.”

  Aglaope’s eyes burned. “How can you be so callous? Speaking of her as if she were nothing but a burden before she is even cold!”

  “Perhaps her body is not cold, but it is well-carved,” Ligeia said. “And Thelxiope would not want her life wasted with grief and sorrow. She knew the gift she could give us—would have cut her own throat had it come to that, if it meant you lived on. And all the more quickly if she thought it would bring your Akheloios!”

  She shook her head, but the truth of Ligeia’s words would not be so easily disregarded. She felt them like barbs beneath her skin, worming toward her heart. Thelxiope would have sacrificed herself. And even if she had not said as much to Aglaope, she had certainly spoken of her own body as their nourishment after her death. That much she could never argue—for they all three had known what came next, should any of their bodies succumb to disease or injury. Corpses and carrion had fed them all well.

  “The sooner we are done, the sooner her flesh is rended from her bones, the sooner she is made free,” Ligeia said, more gently now. “That is the gift we can give her now, do you not see? Let her fly on swift heels to Persephone, that she need not linger any longer upon this accursed rock.”

  Aglaope swallowed her sobs then, realizing her mother’s kindness beneath the practicality of her deed and word—it was the last kindness she might do for Thelxiope, after all. Delivering her in all haste to her goddess in the hopes that she might not suffer any more.

  “May you feast at the goddess’s own table,” she murmured to her grandmother’s shade, hanging like a chill breeze above them. “And may all your hunger be forgotten in the crossing.”

  * * *

  V

  In the winter, there was no reason to sing. Aglaope rested, consumed by her grief, and eager for her dreams. For her wings and the taste of freedom she was not certain anymore that she would ever know in waking—for all her certainty seemed to have fled after Thelxiope’s death.

  When the rains came—far less frequent and full than they needed to refill the cistern that kept them alive through the hot, dry summer—Ligeia had to prod and push her into the shelter of their shallow cave, grumbling all the while about wet furs and fleeces and how damp they would remain until summer came.

  But what did Aglaope care about damp fleece when she spent her nights soaring among the stars, circling out from their bare island and haunting Circe’s palace, with all its feasting and merriment, instead. Aglaope would perch upon the roof, folding her wings carefully to her back, and watch, waiting always for some glimpse of Akheloios among his men, dreaming of how, with his aid, she might one day repay Circe for her pain.

  For it was not only escape from her island she wanted of him now—no! Not just freedom or desire that inspired such longing in her breast. For Thelxiope’s murder, Aglaope wanted revenge. And it did not matter that Odysseus-Akheloios slept in her bed, ate at her side, smiled and laughed in her hall. She was certain once he knew what she had done to his bride, his daughter, he would not laugh and smile for long. The rage of the river god would fall upon her, strong and rushing, and she would be swept to her doom for such a bold offense.

  Whether her dreams were true visions, sent by the gods, by Akheloios himself, that she might know he was kept from her against his will and be reassured of his coming, or the wild imaginings of a tired body and grief-stricken mind, a means by which she might be freed of her sorrow only, Aglaope did not worry or wonder. It was not her place to refuse the gift she was given, or to dwell upon the reason why. And in truth, she had not the strength for the argument with Ligeia it would surely inspire if she spoke of it at all.

  Part of her did wonder, though, if her winged-dreams were not the wings upon which her grandmother’s grandmother had once flown. If the stories Thelxiope told had been spawned from such a simple thing, spun all the larger as they were passed from mother to daughter, until the wings were true feathered limbs, raising their half-starved bodies into the sky, beating the air and the water below and launching them into freedom fr
om their island of misery and death.

  How sweet a thought that must have been, trapped as they were. A nourishment for their spirits when they had nothing for their bodies. As it had nourished Aglaope herself, all these years. As the dreams themselves offered her nourishment and strength and hope, even now.

  “Do not waste Thelxiope’s sacrifice,” her mother said, chiding her when once again she came only reluctantly out of the rain into their shallow cave. “You know she wanted you to live—to see all that she could not and sail away with Akheloios when he came, as she had not.”

  “And what will you do,” Aglaope asked, “when I have gone?”

  “I will greet the goddess gladly when it is my time to travel to the House of Death,” Ligeia said. “You need not worry yourself over me, if that is your concern.”

  “You wish me to leave you behind so callously? Truly? After all the things you have said, all your scolding and moaning about my foolishness?”

  “Listen to me, child.” Her mother grasped her by the wrist, squeezing tightly, and Aglaope startled at her intensity, unable to tear her gaze away once it was caught. “If I scolded and moaned and admonished you for your dreaming, for your hopes, it was only because I did not want you heartbroken. I did not want you to dream of something that you might never have, and suffer grief and disappointment. But if you think for one moment I would not wish better for you—that I would ever hold you back, if Akheloios came in a swift black ship to steal you away—if I had your faith, my love, I would never have spoken the smallest word of rebuke. And should Akheloios come, as you believe he will, and sail through our rocks as if they hold no threat at all, I would bundle you aboard his ship with all the food and water we had left, and watch you sail into the sun with a joyful heart. Do you understand?”

  Aglaope swallowed, shocked still and wordless, but when her mother’s grasp upon her wrist tightened again, demanding her answer, she nodded.