Eurydice explained her purpose, ending, “It would be wise, I think, to settle here for a year or so before we buy property—”
“I will never buy a property here, Eurydice. I have a home, and it is there I will build a house for you to live in. Why did you think I was ready to settle here?”
“You seemed content. You did not speak of Greece. I thought you had come to understand how unwilling I am, how afraid I am, to go to Greece and decided this was a good place to stay, a place where we are welcome and respected. And I know you were not inquiring about ships or employing anyone to enquire for you.”
“That was because I have been waiting for a Greek ship that Phineus told me puts in twice a year, spring and autumn. It will take us to Eleusis and from there we can make our way home.”
“Your home, not mine,” Eurydice cried. “If you take me to Greece, something terrible will happen.”
“No, love, no,” Orpheus murmured, flinging off the tunic and taking her in his arms. “I know you are afraid. You have been ill-treated in many places by many people, but this will be different. These people know me, love me. At first, they will trust me when I say that you will do no harm. When they come to know you, you will be safer among them even than here with the king’s favor to protect you. Phineus is old; he might die at any time. Whereas, in my village, no matter how long you live the children of my friends or their grandchildren will know you and know you are good.”
What he said was true, and yet fear gripped Eurydice. She pulled free of his arms and turned her back, burying her face in her hands. “I cannot,” she whimpered. “I know evil will come of my going to Greece.”
Yet even as she said the words, their falseness rang out in her inner ear and she Saw. Terrible things would happen if she went to Greece. She would pass through the cold gates of death—and yet, it would not be evil that would befall her but good. That was totally inexplicable. She struggled to free herself from the Seeing, but was no more successful than she had been in Kyzikos’ palace. All she could do at that moment was flee from their chamber, from the palace, and run to her booth in the marketplace.
She was not alone. Many small merchants and artisans slept in their booths or left an older son or nephew to do so to guard the goods that otherwise would have to be carried home. There was nothing to fear in the faint glow showing through cracks in shutters and behind closed doors, in the small sounds of people stirring behind those doors, but Eurydice crouched in a corner, shivering. She did not know what she feared, but she did not need to wait long. Perhaps half a candlemark passed before there was a soft scratching at the wooden shutter.
“Eurydice.”
Orpheus’ voice. Now she knew what she feared.
“Go away,” she said, sobbing. “You will convince me to come with you if I let you near me, and I will die. Do you not understand? I will die in Greece!”
“So you will, dearling,” the musical murmur came. “When you are an old, old woman, I suppose you will die in Greece. So will I, love.”
“Go away,” she repeated. “I will not let you lead me to my death.”
“I did not think I would convince you so easily,” he said. “I have brought your bedding. I could not bear to think of you sleeping on the cold floor.”
She did not answer and she did not open the shutter that closed the doorway. There was no lock or bar, since she left only a cheap rug and two cheap pillows within—Eurydice did not bother with elaborate trappings to make herself mysterious and her Gift was within herself and needed no tools. But Orpheus did not try the door. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. She would not open to him. She would not!
After a little while, there was a slight scratching noise. He had put the bedding down, she thought. That idiot, it would get all soiled. But she did not hear footsteps going away and she waited a long time, biting her lips and gnawing her knuckles. Then she decided she might not have noticed when he left—he could walk very softly. She did think of Finding him to be sure he was gone, but her soul shriveled in terror. If she Found him, she would go to him. Better to put him out of her mind.
For a few heartbeats she stood in the middle of the floor wringing her hands, but she was afraid the bedding would be stolen, simply left in the street, and finally she pulled the shutter open, grumbling angrily. And he was there, sitting against the stall with his head resting on a pallet he had obtained from Goddess-knew-where. The dim light of a setting moon glinted off a streak on his stubbled cheek. He got to his feet as the shutter slid back and held out the bedding to her.
“You would rather I died by burning or drowning or however your enlightened people dispose of the Gifted than to settle elsewhere than your village?”
“You will not die,” he repeated wearily.
Her lips parted to say she had Seen herself going down the black path to Plutos, but she swallowed back the words because she had also Seen light and warmth and joy tied to that terrible journey. But she was afraid! No matter what the promise, she did not wish to walk that black road to death. She pushed the thought of happiness away and spoke what bred a resentment in her almost as fierce as her fear.
“Nor will you die if you do not go back to that accursed village,” she snapped, took the bedding and flung it behind her, and dragged the shutter closed.
For an interminable moon, Eurydice existed in a kind of numb misery. She was able to work: she Found and Healed, but she was not really living. And then a messenger came from Phineas and bade her come to the king.
“You know I do not wish to part with Orpheus,” he said, his blind eyes staring off to the side. “But the ship from Greece is here, and he will not go without you. I do not think he will live until the ship comes again in the spring, and then it will be going the wrong way.”
“And I will die if I go with him,” Eurydice said.
Suddenly Phineus’ eyes fixed on her. “You will walk down through the gates of death, yes,” he said. “But there you will find what you have sought all your life. If Orpheus does not go home, he will pass through a different gate and find nothing.”
“A man cannot die of homesickness,” Eurydice cried.
“No,” Phineus agreed, “but he can die of believing he will die.”
Eurydice’s breath caught. That was how magic killed. Perhaps Orpheus was bespelled? She had never sensed it in him, but it was not impossible that someone in the village had laid a spell that brought him home. If so, it was possible that she could find the spellcaster and apply a little persuasion—like tying knots in his or her guts—to make that person remove the binding from Orpheus. Then, they could leave the village, possibly before harm was done to her.
“Very well, lord King,” she said to Phineus. “I will go with him, and I thank you for all your kindness to us.”
She found Orpheus lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. “You are an accursed nuisance!” she shouted. “Why could you not go home and leave me in peace.”
He turned his head to her. “Were you at peace?” he asked, frowning. “Were you happy without me, Eurydice?”
“What if I was?” she asked.
He sat up slowly. “If you truly were happy…” His voice faltered, but in a moment he straightened his shoulders and spoke more firmly. “If you were truly happy without me, and will swear that on your bond with your Goddess, then I will go home on that ship alone and leave you in peace.”
“Just remember when I am dead,” Eurydice spat, “that it was your hand that killed me—no matter how I die.”
* * *
When they reached Orpheus’ village, however, Eurydice thought at first that she would soon escape it. The old headman had died in the years Orpheus had been away and a far less sympathetic man had taken his place. He was plainly dissatisfied with what Orpheus gave him. The truth was that they had little to give, little left of their hoard. Orpheus had done little singing on their way across Greece partly out of haste and partly to protect Eurydice, and she, of course had not dared exp
ose any hint of her Gift. Worse, however, was that the headman was quite furious over the fact that Orpheus had brought home a foreign woman. It had been expected, the headman said, that Orpheus would marry a decent girl, one of the village maidens, not bring a far-traveling strumpet home with him.
At that point Orpheus had taken the headman by the throat and Eurydice had cried, “Oh, let him go and let us go also, since we are not welcome here.” But Orpheus had simply shaken his head at her, shaken the headman like a rat, and made clear to the whole village that Eurydice was to be spoken to and treated with respect. Then he had demanded a house and garden, reminding the townsfolk of the gold and silver and copper he had brought home to enrich the entire village over many years. Enough of the older men and women agreed, rather shamefaced at the headman’s greed, that there was an empty cottage and Orpheus had a right to it.
More shocks were in store for Orpheus. The cottage was long empty and needed major repairs. This did not trouble him when he first saw the place because he expected, as was village custom, that all the men would rally round and the roof would be rethatched, the door rehung, the walls replastered in a day or two. Custom for a village girl, the headman said. Foreigners had to pay their way. There were shamed faces again. In the night, bundles of thatch and hewn boards appeared in the cottage shed, but the men were afraid not only of the headman but of their wives and sisters who were not pleased that a prize like Orpheus should have slipped through their hands. If they made her miserable enough, they thought, she would not endure like a well-trained Greek wife; she would leave.
Although some days were still mild and sunny, winter was close. Eurydice knew that it was really too late to try to leave Greece and find a safe haven elsewhere. And for all his anger and disappointment, Orpheus showed no signs of wanting to leave—so she gave him what little jewelry she had and the repairs were done. The house was sound, but there was nothing in it—no furniture and, worse, no food for the winter. Orpheus made a bed; Eurydice ranged the fields and hills gathering and hunting, too. But that was not safe; she was accused of killing the village’s goats when she brought down a deer, even though in the end the headman was forced to admit the hide and horns were those of a deer and no goat was missing. Nonetheless, it was not enough. To last through the hard months of winter, they would have to buy food.
Unfortunately, in the village there was really no way for them to earn. The villagers expected Orpheus to play, as he always had in the past, for nothing. He refused. In the past, he said, everything in the village had been free to him: food, shelter, and help of any kind. Now that he must pay his way, they must pay theirs also. That made no one happy. And then Eurydice’s Gift was exposed when she Found a child. The little one had strayed away from an older sister while they were watching the herd. The older girl had searched until dark and then come weeping home. All the villagers rushed out with torches, but there were too many cracks and crevices, dips and hollows, on the hillside. They could not find the child—and the nights were growing very cold.
“I will take you to him,” Eurydice said, stopping the wailing mother as the searchers were passing Orpheus’ house on their way home.
In her terror, the woman did not question, only followed as Eurydice led her without any searching or wavering to a little form caught on a ledge. The woman began to wail anew, but Eurydice knew the child still lived and when the men drew it up, she laid her hands on its small head and mended the cracked bone, drew away the clotted blood so sense returned.
“Witch!” the headman cried.
This time, however, both the father and mother turned on him, snarling, “My son lives!” and “A Healer is no witch.”
That was well enough accepted among the people that no one else cried “witch,” but Eurydice feared that the idea was planted. She was caught between an upper and nether millstone. She dared not refuse to Heal the sprains and cuts that were brought to her or to Find lost cats, dogs, and trinkets—but she dared not charge for her work either. Neighbors helped each other naturally; it was witches who expected to be paid. But they still needed metal to buy food.
“I believe you are safe here now,” Orpheus said weeks later when most of the leaves of the trees bordering the lane lay in drifts on the ground. “I will visit some of the houses where I have sung in the past and earn some metal.”
“Safe? Why should you worry about that? I will come with you.”
“Do not be a fool, Eurydice,” Orpheus said. “A Greek woman cannot go wandering about the countryside with a minstrel—at least not a decent woman. You would be taken for a whore and treated like one.”
In all the time they had traveled through Greece and Eurydice had concealed her Gift and her Power, through all the nastiness created by the headman and the rejection of the villagers, not once had Eurydice said “I told you so.” She had been sorry, in a way, that she was not accepted. She had clung to a shred of hope that she, too, would find a home in the place that Orpheus loved. However, when it was plain that she was not welcome, she did not taunt Orpheus with it. It was near winter and there was nowhere for them to go. But this was the last straw, the final misery.
“You mean,” she snarled, “that I am condemned to live in this miserable hole for the rest of my life, never to travel again, never again to stretch my Gift or worship my Goddess? Is this to what you have brought me?”
“You agreed,” he said, but his eyes slid aside.
“I agreed because I knew you traveled much of the time, that you visited the cities and the palaces of kings. I expected to go with you. Now you say I must stay here…forever?”
“You will grow to like it,” he said, looking at the ground.
“Do you believe that?” Eurydice cried.
“I—I must believe it,” he whispered. “You are a woman. Time will dull your unwomanly craving for strangeness and adventure. You will become—”
“Nothing!” she screamed. “I will become nothing!”
“You will never become nothing. You will become a proper woman, accustomed to a woman’s life, and take joy in other things. You will have children.”
“Not in this village!” she spat at him. “I have held myself barren all this time. I will die barren rather than bring up a child in this place.”
“Eurydice—” he began, reaching for her.
“Out!” she snarled. “I have never used magic against you Orpheus, but if you do not make some compromise to make my life bearable, I will have you no longer. Out!”
“It is cold, Eurydice,” he protested, almost smiling.
“Good! Go find a decent woman to warm you or find some way to take me with you. I will put on a seeming of a boy.”
“No. It is not fitting for a woman. You would have to sleep among the men and—”
“And that is more important to you than my unhappiness?”
“You fool! For what would I bring with me a boy who cannot sing or play? To bring a boy with me would not be good for my reputation, and boys are not always safe among our men.” His voice was sharp and his mouth tight. “And you do not need to be unhappy. You only wish to think you are better than our women. There is enough work to keep you busy, work fitting for a woman and of benefit to us, which wandering about the countryside would not be.”
She did not answer, understanding at last how firmly she was trapped. Orpheus had always intended to turn her into a Greek wife. That death she had Seen, was it at her own hands? Orpheus came toward her and she shrank away, shuddering, muttering a spell—but not against him. She could not bring herself to do that. Backing up toward the hearth, she sank down in a corner beside it, shrinking in on herself. He came and tried to lift her, but she had walled herself off and he could not touch her. He pleaded and reasoned, but did not say the words that would release her. Finally he brought out his cithara and played, but even his Gift could not pierce the depths of her despair or break the shield she had drawn around herself. She could see the streaks of tears on his cheeks. He grieved for her
misery—but still he did not speak the words she needed to hear.
He tried all night to convince her to let him soothe her, but this time she was adamant. She was sure, at last, that she knew his purpose. He loved her, but hated and feared her Gifts—as if they were separate, not part of her—and believed somewhere deep inside himself that they were evil. Orpheus was trying to save her from herself, cure her of being a witch. He knew he was hurting her and was sorry for it, but he could tell himself that it was like the pain of the cautery, curative, not to be avoided lest far worse befall.
She slept for a while inside her shield and woke cramped, hungry, and in need of the privy. Orpheus was sitting, staring at her. Thoroughly annoyed, she dropped the shield and froze him, took care of her needs, leaving ample signs that she had washed, eaten, changed her clothes, then she took a tunic she was sewing, moved her chair to the hearth, unfroze Orpheus, and resumed her shield. It did not take him long to realize what had happened and he stood staring at her, open-mouthed. She stared back, then dropped her eyes to her work.
Two days later, without a single word exchanged, Orpheus left. At first Eurydice was relieved. The constant maintenance of the shield, albeit a small drain, alternating with the use of the freezing spell had depleted her Power severely, if not yet dangerously. Far worse than that, however, was that she had felt herself weakening. Too often when she should have been for her disguise and how to obtain enough metal to bring her safely to the coast and buy her passage on a ship going east so that she could eventually get back to Salmydessus or at least to Kyzikos, she found herself trying instead to think of some way to stay with Orpheus and retain her sanity. Once he was gone she was sure she would be able to view the situation more logically.
Unfortunately, that did not happen. Her first day alone she spent straightening the disorder her withdrawal and Orpheus’ rage and grief had created in the cottage. To her chagrin, Eurydice found that she was already bitterly lonely. She had not realized until he was gone, how much of each day was filled with Orpheus. Even though they had their separate tasks, there was hardly an hour when they did not meet and exchange a word or a smile.
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