by Rebecca Sky
I know the answer – I read it in our manual. It says that Eros wanted to keep the arrow of infatuation away from his mother, Aphrodite. Apparently, Aphrodite wasn’t happy with his choice to marry Psyche, and Eros was worried she’d use the golden arrow to turn Psyche’s love towards another man. So while she was asleep, he hid it inside Psyche. But he didn’t know she was pregnant and the arrow pierced their unborn child, the power transferring to baby Hedone. Thanks to that we, the descendants of Hedone – Hedonesses – have the power of Eros’s golden arrow in us, but when we use it, we feel what that baby felt.
I don’t bother raising my hand. It’s one thing to read it, it’s another to announce it as truth.
When no one answers, Sister Hannah Marie walks to the middle aisle. ‘Pull out Eros’s Arrows and turn to here.’
I slide the textbook out from under my pile of papers. The leather cover’s still dirty from this morning. I run my finger over Marissa’s heel indent before flipping to the page. It’s a full-colour fresco of Eros shoving a gold arrow into Psyche’s swollen belly and the words IN THE BEGINNING. This is how we came to be – the Hedonesses’ origin is one giant mistake.
The Sister nods with excitement. ‘It all comes back to the arrow. The act of creating love is painful. All the tension, embarrassment, all the emotions balled together and injected into someone, just like an arrow piercing a heart. That is what you chosen ones feel when you use your power. What you feel is the physical manifestation of what Hedone felt when she was stabbed while inside the womb: fear, pain, isolation, the absence of love, and then all love at once.’ She pauses, letting us take it in. ‘Can any of you tell me why Eros gave up his arrow, his greatest power?’
I drift off, thinking back to the painting of Eros in the hall, and almost don’t notice Sister Hannah Marie calling my name until Marissa nudges me in the side.
‘Yes, Sister?’ I rub my ribs and glare at Marissa.
She raises an eyebrow and mouths, ‘You’re welcome.’
‘I was asking if you knew why Eros hid the arrow?’ the nun repeats.
I shrug. I’ve heard the story more times than I’d like. I just don’t want to be a participant in this conversation.
The Sister frowns, stepping back to scan the classroom. ‘He gave up the arrow in order to keep Psyche to himself.’ She places her hand over her heart, trapping her rosary beneath her chalk-tinted fingers. ‘You Hedonesses are a product of an act of love. Eros gave up his greatest power to keep his true love. This is no small gift from a god, and that makes it a huge responsibility bestowed upon you. Each time you turn a man, you give over a piece of your power, much like Eros.’
Marissa’s hand shoots up.
‘Yes, child?’
‘Will we lose our ability to turn men if we give over too much of our powers each time?’
I laugh to myself. Of course she’d care about that.
‘There’s no need to worry,’ the Sister says. ‘The love your charge gives you will fill you up, make you stronger. Most young Hedonesses’ power sparks for the first time when they feel love, or choose to pursue it. And some Hedonesses even learn to return the love of the men in some way. In those cases, we’ve seen their powers grow exponentially. In very rare cases, they can even turn men with their touch.’ She smiles and looks right at me. ‘Much like your mother, Rachel.’
I fidget in my seat, too afraid to look up for fear of locking eyes with anyone. I hate people talking about my mother’s heightened ability almost as much as I hate being a child of forced love. I imagine Joan of Arc riding into the classroom, the word fighter painted in red on her back, a fierce look in her eyes as she rams her sword through the Sister.
Marissa shoots up her hand again. ‘So if I love a guy I turn, I might be able to get powerful enough to turn by touch?’
‘Love is a most powerful magic,’ the Sister answers.
I’m so tired of all this. ‘What we do isn’t love,’ I blurt, regretting it when I see the look on Sister Hannah Marie.
‘It is love,’ she says with an icy sharpness. ‘Don’t you see? It’s the amount of love you offer that gets transferred into your charge. The more the intentions are true, the more power surges into him, the longer he stays turned, and the more it affects you.’
The class erupts in murmurs of understanding, and the fact that they buy everything they hear without question only makes me madder. If we’re really offspring of a god, shouldn’t that give us the right to some power of our own, something stronger than making puppets of men?
I glance at the boys seated up front and anger burns through me. ‘Who decides the intentions? One person might believe in something that another person thinks is wrong.’
Marissa inhales sharply and the hopeful expression on Sister Hannah Marie’s face fades to stone.
‘I am tired of your doubt.’ The Sister scribbles something on a piece of paper, a long something – it takes up the whole sheet. When she finishes, she seals it with wax from her altar candle, and lays it on the corner of her desk. ‘Take this letter to Mother Superior and remain in her office until she permits you to leave.’
I set to work packing up my things, running through every excuse I can give my ma when she finds out. Because she will. She always does.
Marissa watches me with a mix of sympathy and confusion. This stuff is important to her – she seeks her identity in being a Daughter of Hedone. All I want is to be normal.
The Sister claps and the class turns from watching me. ‘Marissa, come partner with Paisley. You can be first to demonstrate.’
Marissa hops to the front, assuming position at the corner of the mat. Paisley stands inches away, palms out, feet spread, shoulders braced. Marissa takes her hand and gives it a gentle kiss. Instantly Paisley’s eyes roll back and her knees wobble, but it’s not as strong as how the boy with the blue eyes in the park reacted. The Hedoness power doesn’t work the same on us. It’s why they make us practise on each other first.
Paisley giggles and rubs her hand. ‘That was intense. I almost blacked out.’
‘Very good, take a seat in case you do.’ The Sister motions Paisley down. ‘What did you feel, Marissa?’
‘It hurts much less than kissing a boy,’ she says, ‘but it’s a lot less fun.’
The class giggles again. Even the Sister chuckles. I fight the urge to shake my head.
‘Paisley, can you call your gentleman friend up? We shall have Marissa demonstrate on him.’
Paisley hesitates. ‘It won’t hurt him, will it?’
Sister Hannah Marie smiles. ‘I assure you he won’t remember a thing. What we don’t know doesn’t hurt us.’
I roll my eyes. Paisley nods and waves her boy over. He stands on the mat in her place, waiting for Marissa’s kiss, his eyes never leaving Paisley’s.
‘Who knows what happens when a turned boy is injected with the powers of a different Hedoness?’ the Sister asks.
Paisley raises her hand and the Sister nods for her to answer.
‘Does it erase the instructions of the last Hedoness?’
‘It does not,’ the Sister says firmly. ‘Every command given to a turned man stays in place even after the Hedoness’s ability wears off. Unless, of course, the next Hedoness instructs him differently. But thank you for your question, Paisley. Now, could you please command him to do something? Then we will have Marissa demonstrate the change.’
I finish gathering my things, and approach Sister Hannah Marie for the letter before I have to witness any more of their experimentations. Her eyes offer a look of disappointment, much like the look Sister Anthony Christine gave me earlier. I try not to read into it as I take the letter from her outstretched hand and head for the door.
‘And Rachel?’
I pause, not turning around.
‘It’s your own heart that’s the judge,’ she says.
Mother Superior’s reading spectacles slide down her nose as her eyes dart across the note.
I gulp and shift in th
e doorway, waiting for my verdict, my Converse shuffling awkwardly on her tiled floor.
She glances up from the page, those dark eyes assessing me, then carries on reading.
A few throat clears and a ‘hmmm’ or two later, she lowers the note to her desk. ‘Take a seat, Rachel.’
She points to an altar chair in the corner. I place my books beside it and shakily lower myself in, then sit rigidly with my hands folded in my lap, and my shoes tucked under so she doesn’t see them and get mad all over again. Sister Hannah Marie’s class on turning is maddening, but anything’s better than Mother Superior’s office. It’s dim and dusty, a collection of Gothic crucifixes line the walls, and dozens of lit prayer candles – each painted to depict the death of a saint – clump in random groupings about the place. It’s more like a funeral parlour than an office. My eyes are drawn to a grey rock with bright gold veins, under a glass dome on a corner of her desk. It’s the only thing in the room that isn’t staged and it’s the only thing not covered in dust.
‘That’s a philosopher’s stone,’ she says. ‘It’s used to turn base metals into gold. Though this one has run out of magic.’ She rubs a phantom smudge off the glass. ‘It could work again, if I find a god willing to give me their magic-restoring blood.’ She smiles to herself before looking up. ‘It was a gift from the Committee.’
When I don’t reply, Mother Superior sighs and adjusts her seat, resting the letter and her spectacles on her large mahogany desk. ‘You don’t like it here at St Valentine’s, do you?’
My first instinct is to apologize. But I take a deep breath and lift my chin, noticing a particularly gruesome candle with a caricature of a decapitated man. ‘Not really, no.’
‘You have no desire to use the gift given to you?’
My stomach flips. It’s this belief that makes me twitchy – the idea that I have one talent, one purpose in life. I’d like to believe I have several gifts and being a Hedoness isn’t one of them.
‘Which gift are you referring to?’
Mother Superior slams her hand on the desk. ‘Don’t play games with me, Rachel. You know what I’m asking. I will not tolerate disrespect.’
My breaths come short. ‘Honestly? No, I don’t think it’s a gift to steal a man’s will. I think it’s selfish. Awful, even.’ Heat floods my cheeks and I cringe, waiting for the shouting, the anger, but the nun stays calm. I lean forward, my hands gripping the side of the chair, its tattered wooden edge gripping back. ‘Shouldn’t love be a—’
‘Rachel.’ She hisses my name, causing me to jerk back. The tension of her on again, off again temper has my entire body in knots. ‘It’s time you stop thinking about what you don’t have and start being thankful for what you do.’
‘And what’s that?’ I ask, a little too sharp.
Mother Superior locks on to me, those dark eyes holding me captive. ‘You are a strong, intelligent young woman who has been given a gift that could change the world for the better. The greatest of all things is love. If you used that brain to think of solutions instead of problems, imagine what you could do. Look at the good done by the Hedonesses that have gone before you. There are women, who started right here in St Valentine’s, in key political positions in nearly every government. If necessary, the Committee can step in and take control – we have you Hedonesses to thank for that.’
‘How good of them.’
‘Rachel …’ She says my name like a sigh. ‘It’s a disappointment that you refuse to embrace your gift. With your mother’s extraordinary ability, I had high hopes for you. There was even talk of the Committee continuing training during your work years and placing you in a respectable position. But your lack of acceptance makes us doubt you’re ready.’
The last thing I want is to sign up for the ‘strongly encouraged’ after-graduation work years. And I certainly don’t want to spend them training with anyone who values utilising Hedoness power.
‘At this point I’m going to be advising the Committee to hold you back for an additional year at St Valentine’s, unless you show some major progress in your last semester.’
‘What?! That’s not fair.’
‘The life of the gifted is rarely fair.’
‘So if I turn someone, I can graduate and go on with my life? Is that all you care about?’
She crosses her hands over her desk and takes a calming breath. ‘That and law and history. It is imperative you learn your power before your next stage of training.’
‘Next stage? What if I don’t want it?’
‘Then you are the Committee’s problem.’
‘Isn’t the Committee busy with important things? What would they want with a Hedoness who doesn’t want to be a Hedoness?’
‘The Committee oversees everything we do. But we can discuss them later. Right now, we’re discussing you.’ She puts her glasses back on, but doesn’t go back to reading the note. Part of me thinks she just needs an added barrier between us, as little and insignificant that it is.
‘Rachel?’ A look of disapproval washes over the nun’s face. ‘This is a serious matter. The gods have given you a gift and you refuse to embrace it.’
I absorb the nun’s penetrating glare and try to keep my breathing calm, collected. It’s not working. It’s like I’m on trial.
She takes my silence as doubt. ‘How can you have such a gift and still question the gods’ existence?’
‘It’s not that I don’t believe in the gods. It’s that I’m not sure I agree with them.’ I regret the words the moment they slip off my tongue. Not because I don’t mean them. I do. But because I don’t want to sit through the lecture that’s twitching on her lips. ‘And anyway,’ I say, hoping to change the subject, ‘I just don’t understand why the Committee needs Hedonesses to do their work when there are actual gods around.’
‘The gods are not allowed to interfere with humans and as such are not allowed out of Olympus. The commitee sealed the doors to Olympus and the otherworlds. You know this.’
‘It seems strange that those who are supposed to keep the gods and demigods from interfering would encourage Hedonesses to—’
Mother Superior sighs. ‘Over the years, the Committee learned that it was easier to control the gods with the help of Hedonesses. Now that the gods no longer interfere in our world, the Committee’s efforts have turned to world politics, trying to spread peace by placing Hedonesses in influential and strategic positions. You should know this also, Rachel.’
‘Maybe they’d be better off letting them out than having a bunch of forced-love children do their work.’
‘I see what this is really about.’ She pushes up her glasses and re-crosses her hands, leaning over the desk to be nearer to me. ‘A child who is a product of forced-love is a form of beauty birthed from darkness. A gift. You are born of sinners, yes. We all are. Still, future sins are your choice, not your right. You can be a part of greatness, Rachel.’
The nun’s quiet response stabs my heart.
She’s confirmed what I’ve always known – I am a product of sin.
I am birthed from darkness.
I am a monster.
When I get home, I practically run through the door and straight into the kitchen. I’m greeted with the familiar smells of cardamom, asafoetida, coriander – my parents have been baking again.
Ma stands by the counter. Her dark hair is neatly pinned off her face, showing off the beautiful gold and black beaded necklace that I’ve never seen her without, and she’s wearing a long navy-blue saree. ‘How was school, sweetheart?’ she turns to ask, her warm brown eyes squinting at the side as she smiles.
‘Please don’t make me go back, Ma.’ I toss my books on the table next to Ma’s navy leather going-out gloves, and flop into the chair.
‘I can’t remember the last time you said something like that.’ She laughs. ‘Oh wait, yes I do. Yesterday.’ She returns to filling the teapot.
‘Ma, I’m serious. Why can’t I just go to another school?’
; ‘Rachel—’
‘Hate isn’t strong enough a word.’
‘If St Valentine’s is that bad I can send you to Gujarat. You could stay with Nani and go to one of the Hedoness schools there.’
‘No thank you. I love New York. I don’t want to live anywhere else. And I want to go to school here, just … not a Hedoness school. I never want to use my gift.’ I hiss out the word ‘gift’. I can’t help it.
‘Location I can work with, but Hedoness training is mandatory.’
I sigh.
Ma reaches across and puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘My love, you know you won’t need university when you graduate school. It may not be what you wish, but Hedonesses have higher callings. It’s our job to use our gift to protect the human race. And it is our duty to grow our families.’
More Hedoness kids. I shudder at the thought. Obligations, expectations. I don’t care what Ma, or the Committee, wants me to do after – I’m done. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to become a social worker and help children without families, children who are abandoned, children who have no choice.
I fiddle with the salt shaker, spilling granules over Ma’s gloves and her hand-dyed tablecloth. ‘Hey. You’re supposed to be supportive of me.’ I shake off the gloves and flick the salt from the table as I wait for her response.
‘I do support you. But I also worry for your future happiness. Your happiness is more important to me than my own.’ She places a mug of tea and a plate of perfectly rolled khandvi on the table. My stomach rumbles and my mouth salivates to inhale the savory treat.
‘I want to be a Nani one day,’ she tells me.
‘I thought you were worried for my happiness.’ I squeeze a lime wedge over the khandvi, then pop one in my mouth.
‘Speaking of which, have you looked through any of the biodata husband profiles Nani sent over for you? I know she’ll ask next time we talk.’