by Diana Tyler
“Tell me. Do you believe the Moonbow to be the promise of freedom as the Eusebians do? Surely you must know, Goddess of the Rainbow…” he said, sardonic laughter betraying his reverence.
Without pausing for an instant to craft a preserving lie, I spoke the truth. “I’d sooner believe that I am as you call me, master.”
I present myself to Acheron who has risen to the edge of the couch to retrieve a napkin from the far side of the silver pedestal.
“Eusebian rebels seem to be growing bolder by the day,” begins Acheron. “Killing Alpha sentries, stealing their horses, inciting chaos in the streets… It pains me to think of you or dear Niobe behaving so barbarically.” He takes my hands in his, looking at me with a pauper’s pitiful eyes. “Do you wish to betray me, girl?”
Betray? Am I that obvious, I think. I fight to keep my lips from smiling. In fact, betraying Acheron is my greatest wish, closely following the wish to kill him in cold blood.
My failure to respond aloud replaces the false suffering in Acheron’s face with raw, virulent fury. “Niobe, bring me my whip,” he commands, wiping his mouth. He stands and impatiently snatches the whip from Niobe’s hand. “Have you gone deaf, goddess? Answer my question!”
He begins pacing, madly whipping the mosaic floor with every drunken step. “Do you wish to be tied to a pile of willow branches, set on fire, and have your flesh eaten away, your ashes left for fish food as your brother’s were?” He stops just inches from my face, tilts my chin up toward him, and waits for my answer.
I feel Niobe’s hands behind me removing my cloak. “No master, I don’t want to betray you,” I say, careful not to grimace at his foul-smelling breath.
“Good, goddess. I wouldn’t want it for you.” He spins on his leather boot, then stands motionless, letting silence commence my punishment.
The first lash across my shoulder blades knocks me to my hands and knees.
“You must never speak a word – not even a whisper – of rebellion. No running around stirring up the masses like those heathen rats,” Acheron barks, bringing the whip down again, and again, and again…
Face down on the glass river I feel warm streams of blood start to surface on my back. “You shall not be so ignorant. You will know what the punishment is for such stupidity before you sneak away…little… Eusebian…rat!”
Acheron’s breathing accelerates and I count seventeen strong strikes until at last his strength gives out. The lashings weaken.
I hear him stumble back onto his couch and take a swig of wine. “I rescued you that night from the madness of the execution. The scars will fade in time…unless your loyalty fails your conscience.”
As if sealing the threat, Acheron splashes his wine onto my throbbing wounds. My open flesh drinks it in and I cannot stop my tears.
“Stand, goddess!” Somehow, with head spinning and limbs shaking, I rise as red rivulets trickle down my legs. Acheron holds his right hand in a fist across his chest. “As a proud Guardian of Petros, I salute you!”
Acheron sneers at the drops of blood falling fast onto the floor. “Niobe will clean up the mess. And when the time is right, you will clean up hers.”
Coughing pitifully, he sits again, tosses the whip aside, and kicks his feet up onto a pillow. “Now fetch some water. My throat has gone dry.” With that, his eyes close and he’s swallowed into sleep.
From the watery periphery of my eye, I watch Niobe scurry out of the room. Perhaps she knows it is only a matter of time before the floor beneath her becomes stained with her own Eusebian blood. Perhaps she knows that the Oracles are fools, that her hope is vanity, and that the Moonbow is nothing more than white light entering rain.
CHAPTER TWO
CARYA
The clay water pot feels like a granite boulder in my trembling hands. I stop on the side of the street to rest, and as the world seems to curl up like a shadowy scroll before me, I sit and begin to wonder about the severity of my wounds. I reach under my tunic and gingerly slide my fingers along my side. I shudder to feel the steady flow of warm pulsing life exiting my body, and I know the damage is more severe than Acheron intended.
Squeezing my eyes, willing my vision to right itself, I begin to hear gleeful laughter falling from the treetops of a walnut orchard nearby. The laughing stops as someone leaps out of a tree and lands with a light thud a short distance away. Quiet footsteps bring with them the intoxicating aroma of lavender, mint, and lemongrass, and I manage to smile as the presence begins to speak:
“Iris! Iris – a rainbow burned at midnight!
Why have your colors faded - all of them, but red?
Iris! Iris! Bleeding in the moonlight!
How could he do this to you – any worse, you would be…dead…”
Her tinkling voice trails off. Sniffling, she wraps her hand around three of my fingers and cries softly on my shoulder.
“Carya,” I say. “Carya, it’s good to see you.” I realize that I can’t see Carya at all, and yet my imagination paints her beautifully in my mind’s eye… a teenaged girl clothed in robes dyed blue like a deep sea’s waves…a coronet of pearls atop a head of waist-long auburn waves…sky-blue eyes that shimmer with starlight and purest tears.
I met her when I was just eleven, and felt like I was looking at an older sister. My hair is auburn like hers, but instead of wavy and full, it is board straight, pitifully thin, and reaches just below my ears. Acheron chopped it all off one night while he was drunk, and afterwards laughed at how boyish and ugly I looked, “sure to be a spinster, should I ever grant you the opportunity to marry,” he said. My eyes, though blue like Carya’s, are not blue like the sky’s, at least not always. I’m told they change from looking light as the noonday sky to dark as dusk, depending on my mood. I haven’t seen them sky-blue in years. Carya is also small-boned and thin like me, but I imagine she has more muscle than one might guess, like I do.
Carya is a nymph, immortal for all I can tell. She and dozens of others like her populate the dazzling stories of gods and heroes that captivate the wide-eyed youth of Petros. But all children grow up and learn to question the magic, the mystery, the myths they once loved so much, the princesses and warriors they wished to become. Even I believed the nymphs to be mere inventions of blind poets and bored sailors…until I was met face to face with Carya.
My vision slowly returning, I can see Carya untying a round silk pouch from her belt. I reach my hand into my own girdle and search for my jasper stone, something Carya gave to me the night I met her and that I’ve kept close to me ever since. But my hand resurfaces empty.
“Why did you give it to me? The stone I keep under my bed?” I say breathlessly, hoping with all my heart that the only possession I have in the world is safe within my chamber.
“Shhhh…” she replies, and then dips her fingers into her pouch, places the contents in her palm, and then spits into it.
“Now is not the time to ask questions, but to mend.
I was not sent to linger, but to your wounds attend.”
I don’t persist, perhaps because I know that doing so will have no effect on this unflappable creature, or perhaps because my master has taught me well never to challenge those in authority. As Carya nudges me to lie prostrate on the ground, I wonder why it is I’m allowing a thirteen year-old girl to have her way so easily. After all, I’m older than her now.
As I feel Carya fold up my tunic, I begin to rock from side to side and kick my feet defiantly, like a toddler refusing medicine. But the mixture of herbs and saliva she applies to my back and legs all but paralyzes me with instantaneous relief, and I remember that Carya is something much more than a girl, much more than an Alpha or Eusebian.
“New skin, perfect and pink, like the rosy dawn tomorrow,
In time you can be healed of your doubts, your fears, your sorrow.”
It starts to rain and Carya lifts me up effortlessly, and I follow her eyes as they look directly above us where the Moonbow now hangs, its omniscient eye now
illuminating each delicate raindrop.
“Jasper, red as blood and Moonbow’s highest band,
Carry Jasper with you in your heart and in your hand.
Remember the bow still shines after darkest days are done.
Remember hope will follow you into bright orange desert sun.”
Lowering my eyes to meet hers, I see only the walnut trees standing still as sentries at their posts. For a minute longer, I let them protect me, and let the Moonbow fill me with the foreign feeling of hope.
Hope. The word means nothing to a slave. But to a slave who is also a child of Asher, it means everything.
I make it to the Okeanos River without a single twinge of pain and leap eagerly to the water’s edge where I have my fill of the sweet, untroubled stream. Then I remove my sandals and sit on the bank, trying to ignore the fragrance of Carya’s remedy still seeping into my skin, and the sheen of the river reminding me of the Moonbow’s presence.
Wiggling my toes in the water, I hear a loud splash upset the waves, followed by another…and another… and another… To my left, I count six people reveling in the moonlit ripples and spot two others standing guard close by on the shore– all of them likely bandits and orphans, given their tattered clothes, young, boisterous voices, and the undercurrent of defiance that fills them.
I can’t help but look up to the Moonbow and whisper Carya’s name, wishing she would appear one more time and tell me if I’ll receive the doma or not. If I’m still a legitimate heir despite the distance I’ve kept between myself and Duna.
For a moment, I imagine myself joining these outlaws right here and now. Smashing Acheron’s water jar against the trunk of the nearest willow tree and stomping the shards to pieces beneath my feet. Waking up each morning never knowing where or how I’ll feed myself that day, or where I’ll sleep at night. Forgetting my name and accepting a new one, or none at all. And letting the memories of my family, my home, and my childhood become dim and disjointed, like the fragments of irretrievable dreams.
The Moonbow is fading, and so is my patience with myself as I entertain daydreams of a different life, a coward’s life; I cannot simply run away, not as long as my master still breathes.
I banish Carya and the doma to the dungeon of my mind and get to my feet, dragging the water pot with me. I turn to dip the jar into the river, but a bone-crushing grip seizes my shoulder, and I know… I’m not going anywhere.
CHAPTER THREE
AMBUSH
My other arm is swiftly clenched, and I’m spun around so fast that I drop Acheron’s pot, sending it rolling toward the river. I try to yank myself free, desperate to jump after it, but my efforts are useless; my captor is a Giant, nearly twice my height and with more strength than all of his friends combined, I’m certain.
“No use getting soaked over a little water jug now, is there?” he says, watching me seethe as the jar glides onto the waves.
“It was my master’s,” I growl through gritted teeth.
The Giant shakes his head mockingly, making a sympathetic clicking noise with his tongue until the wandering object finds its way into the hands of one of the bathing bandits who holds it up triumphantly, then signals to us with the harsh call of a heron.
“I’ll be dead in the morning if I return without it,” I say, jerking fiercely in a foolish effort to salvage my only chance of survival.
My captor tightens his grip and grins at me like a lion with a mouse trapped under its paw. “Who’s to say we won’t kill you tonight…Iris…?”
Every muscle in my body tenses as I watch the four outlaws in the Okeanos swim toward us, alerted to the smell of fresh meat. These must be the rebels – the heathen rats – Acheron warned me about during tonight’s bloody chastisement.
“How do you know my name?” I ask, silently cursing Carya for deserting me, leaving me with nothing more than worthless riddles and a mended body, ripe for breaking again.
“Being an orphan doesn’t make you invisible. We’ve seen you in the marketplace. A sad lonely Eusebian girl we thought dead long ago, like her brother…”
The Giant releases me and withdraws into the shadows as the others encircle me, their helpless prey.
“Duna smiles on us!” shouts their leader, a wild-eyed, tan-skinned young man no older than me with a shaven head and a ragged scar on either cheek. Pacing toward me, he drops the water jar, sending it skidding to my feet. Staring at it stunned, I hear the Giant shout:
“Aren’t you going to pick it up? After all, it belongs to your beloved master!” The din of jeering this incites is nearly deafening. Pressing my forefingers firmly against each ear, I can think of nothing else to do but yell back.
“He is not my beloved master!” I scream, vocal cords straining. The leader strikes his hand sideways through the air, silencing his pack. “I am a slave. I – ”
“I know who you are. A wretched slave to the Guardian Acheron, yes. But more than that. You are the sister to a far more important man. A man who died honorably for his people,” the leader says, unsheathing a small knife from his belt. “You’ll soon find out if he finds you honorable.”
The leader charges me, his iron blade poised to kill within seconds. I do as I did on countless – needless – occasions under Acheron’s roof: draw a deep breath in and squeeze my eyes shut until I see tiny specks and swirls swimming behind my eyelids. At least this will be over sooner than a whipping, I think.
No sound is heard, only that of my heart beat begging for mercy. But I won’t speak up on its behalf; if Carya hasn’t arrived to plead for my life by now and the doma continues to elude me, then who am I to question whether my destiny is to die right here at the reckless hands of miscreants.
All at once I hear the low rumble of thunder, smell the sweetness of Juniper trees, feel the cool kiss of a raindrop on my temple – one last sensation before I’m killed and a pool of orphan blood stretches like a shadow into the life-giving river…
“Wait!” The voice does not belong to Carya. I open my eyes to see the outlaw leader frozen mid-stride, like a prowling wolf alerted to the sound of another rivaling huntsman. I can see him bristling.
Another man steps into the circle, stopping in between me and my newfound adversary. “What is it, Tycho! You’re supposed to be standing guard!” the leader yells, his tanned face reddening with rage.
“Can we not use this girl, Lysander?” The protester speaks in a loud whisper, as if trying to keep his motive secret, as if I might dissent were I to hear it.
Before I can consider why this stranger is intervening – and more than that, whether I want him to – he turns abruptly and shoots me a look, interrupting my thoughts with dark eyes, stern and unreadable. As he comes closer to me I see clearly why he’s been assigned the role of watchman. Though not a Giant like the guard whose hands could have snapped my arms like twigs, Tycho is broad-shouldered and tall, towering over his superior who glares up at him like a spoiled child. If circumstances were different, I might smile envisioning Tycho throwing the boy onto the opposite bank like a discus. But instead of smiling, I squint, making out the grotesque tattoo of a spotted serpent curled up on the underside of Tycho’s right forearm, signifying sworn allegiance to Python, the only real god the Alphas and Eusebians agree exists.
I’ve heard some say that the gods and goddesses of the Alpha myths are as alive as we are, but that they were overthrown by Python millennia ago and enchained deep within the bowels of Petros. If this is true, I wonder why Carya and her kind have not been captured as well. Perhaps that explains why she isn’t here now; she fears Tycho would carry her away into the heart of the Great Sea to be sacrificed into the waves of the underworld…
“Would you kill Acheron?” I jump at Tycho’s words. The idea of killing my master thrills me, and yet I stand speechless. How would I do it…
“Answer him, Iris!” commands Lysander, obviously consenting to his guard’s clever suggestion.
“I…I…I’m not…” My words catch in
my throat.
The leader lets out a slow impatient sigh while the six outlaw-dogs around him begin to snarl.
“Kill her! Kill her, Lysander!” I hear one howl. “Acheron will have us all strapped to pyres within a week if you don’t!” The other outlaws shake their fists and shout in agreement as Lysander tosses his knife from hand to hand, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...
The images conjured by the mention of Enochos are enough to loosen my tongue and unshackle my feet; no Eusebian, no matter how malignant, will burn there because of me. I step forward, and the riot and Lysander’s restlessness die down until all I hear is the far-off screech of a Barn Owl.
“Acheron will have us all killed sooner or later…” I begin.
Before the bandits’ muttering can reach a murderous crescendo, Lysander whispers into Tycho’s ear.
“Let her speak!” Tycho bellows. Lysander whistles for the Giant and quickly points at me with his knife.
Moments later the sentry is looming over my shoulder, and my second chance is granted with a curt nod of Lysander’s head. “Choose your words carefully, girl,” he says, his knife still staring at my heart. I touch my chest nervously and turn to face away from the ready weapon.
“I said Acheron will have us killed because he hates Eusebians more than anything. The only reason I am still alive is because Acheron takes pleasure in punishing me,” I say.
The only reason Niobe is still alive is because he delights in deceiving her, speaking tenderly to her, coddling her until she believes he truly loves her. But what he truly adores is hearing her sob until sunrise after he tells her she holds as much worth as the entrails of the swine she cooked for his supper.
I decide not to mention Niobe, hoping she will be spared from a similar ambush of her own.
“He was the one who ordered my brother’s execution three years ago,” I continue. “Five Eusebians were burned alive because they were servants of the high priest. Because they begged Acheron to stop the pagans from sacrificing in the Temple – ”