by JJ King
Ceto blew out a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. We can’t expect things to work the same way they used to. Poseidon has been showing us things these last few days that are unbelievable.” She looked wide-eyed at Em. “Did you know you can see people on the other side of the world on a fawn?”
Em didn’t stop the smile that pushed against her cheeks, it felt good to let it come. “Phone,” she corrected, “and, yes, I did know. A lot has changed, Mom.”
Thea reached for the pencil and note pad in the middle of the table and began absentmindedly tapping the eraser against her lips. “Do you think Athena cast this spell herself? I mean, I never thought she was capable of something like this, but that was before…” Thea trailed off and swallowed hard.
Em fought the dark memories that sprang back to life with her sister’s words. Instantly, her snakes responded to her mood, shifting nervously around her face. She lifted a hand and stroked them, choosing to ignore the uneasy glances from her parents. She didn’t even look across the room to where she knew Poseidon stood leaning against the wall, listening to them brainstorm.
She didn’t look, but she could feel him, like a hum in the air, a disturbance to the force. Em smiled at that thought and wondered what her father would think of the Star Wars movies. She still remembered the awe she’d felt when she’d watched her first silent film in black and white.
The world had definitely changed. The gods were no more, they’d been forgotten long ago. Technology was god now, just like Neil Gaiman wrote in American Gods.
Still, the old survived. It might be hidden now, gone below deck to survive the changing world, but it survived. She shook her head and pushed the dark away again, for the thousandth time, and shrugged. “Once I would have said no, but you’re right, we don’t know what she’s capable of anymore.” Reluctantly, Em swallowed her pride and twisted to look at Poseidon, “What do you think?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “No, I don’t think this is her. Magics were never her thing. Transformation spells and long-term plotting, now,” he shrugged, “that’s something she’s had down since birth.”
“But, if Athena didn’t cast the curse, who did?” Ceto eased the pencil from Thea’s hand and set it on the table.
“Hecate,” Em spat out the name as unease swirled in her stomach. Em thought back to her time at the temple of Athena. She’d only ever seen the witch from afar, but Hecate had been there with Athena, many times. And if anyone had the power to create a mortal curse like this, it would be her. “She and Athena definitely worked together, more than once.”
Thea nodded, her eyes lighting up with hope that Em hated to dash.
“But the last time we saw Hecate was over two thousand years ago and, like we said, we’re strangers here now. How do we find her?” The room fell into silence that felt heavy in the air. Em ignored the edge of panic that pushed against her mind.
Phorcys spoke up for the first time, “I have an idea buy you’re not going to like it.” He cleared his throat as they all watched him intently, waiting. He swallowed before speaking directly to Ceto, “Our girls will know where to find her.”
Em frowned, thinking for a moment that he was speaking of her and her sisters, then gasped as realization sunk in. “The Grey sisters?” She sucked in a deep breath of hope and shook her head in astonishment, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because they’re insane and might kill us,” Thea muttered under her breath.
“Sthenno,” Ceto said in a tone that instantly silenced the group. It was like being a child again. Em shifted uncomfortably under the weight of her mother’s silence and waited for her to speak. In the seconds that ticked by, Em remembered the last time she’d seen her older sisters.
She’d been young, probably twelve or so, and so innocent. They’d all been innocent. They’d been playing on a stretch of hidden beach, protected by almost vertical walls of sheer cliff, and had wandered too far away from where their mother lay, stretched out in the midday sun.
They’d thought the cave was a siren’s home, their belief fortified by the enchanting voice that echoed out of the cave’s mouth. They’d discussed it and had decided they, the daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, gods of the sea, were more than capable of handling themselves around a Siren. So, they’d wandered into the cave, past the dancing light of the sun reflected on seashells and into the darkness that brought terror.
“Your sisters are not insane,” Ceto said quietly, jarring Em back from her memories. Em looked up at her mother and absently rubbed her arm where her dear sisters had almost burned her flesh clear to the bone. Ceto gaze flicked to the motion and doubt clouded them. She shook her head, “They’re just…” she looked to Phorcys as if he could help her find the right words.
“Monsters,” Em provided the word her mother needed. “They’re monsters, Mom.”
Ceto shook her head, dripping tears onto the table. “No. They’re our children and your sisters. They’ll help us.” She nodded firmly as if the conversation were over and the decision made. Em opened her mouth to argue but snapped it shut when she realized there was little choice. To save Eury they’d have to risk it.
“So, how do we find them?” Em asked.
Phorcys cleared his throat. “Normally I’d suggest sending out a message on the waves, but who knows who’ll be listening. If word gets back to Athena that we’re here…” he trailed off, glancing toward the hallway and his fading daughter. Phorcys shook his head, “No, we’ll have to find another way.”
“I might be able to help with that,” Poseidon spoke up from where he stood leaning against the kitchen island.
Everyone turned to look at him. “Do you know where they are?” Em’s stomach churned with hope and she hated herself for letting him make her feel that.
Poseidon shook his head. “Not exactly, but the old ways haven’t died. I still have sway here in Greece.” He glanced toward the bedroom and took a deep breath, “I’ll try to be quick.”
Then, he was gone and Em was left with emptiness, again. The confusion she’d been wrestling with since she’d laid eyes on him again, mixed with anger, resentment, and hope and left a tinny taste in her mouth. She rubbed a hand against her chest where a tight ball of anxiety furled, just waiting to explode and drag her under. She closed her eyes to regroup.
When she opened her eyes again, it was to see her mother tilting her head, an unspoken signal for Thea and Phorcys to give them some time alone. Thea took the hint easily and steered their father toward the living room, promising to show him a cool movie. Em held back a sigh and waited for whatever was to come.
“It hurts you very much to see him, doesn’t it?” Ceto laid her hand on Em’s forearm.
Em swallowed, not wanting to dissolve into tears in front of her mother, and shrugged. She wondered just how much her mother knew about what had happened so long ago, if she knew the role her eldest daughter had played in ruining her entire family’s life. The guilt of it tore at her, fresh after all this time, so she remained silent.
Ceto sighed loudly and stroked her hand over Em’s cheek. Her touch was so soft, so innocently loving, that the tears Em had been holding back spilled free and coated Ceto’s fingers. Then she was being gathered into her mother’s arms and held, while her quiet tears turned to sobs.
“You always tried to be so strong, my little Medusa.” Ceto murmured as her hands stroked Em’s back repeatedly. “Shhh now, my sweet girl, you don’t always have to be so impenetrable.”
A soft hissing, so like the sound of her mother’s sweet words, filtered its way through Em’s tired mind. She hummed contentedly and exhaled, then realized her mother’s hands were no longer stroking her skin. They were curled at the nape of her neck, in a nest of snakes.
She stilled, realizing this was the very first time her mother had ever voluntarily touched the snakes that made her a monster to the world, but were, in reality, as much a part of her now as the skin that covered her. It hadn’t always been that way, sh
e’d detested them for years, until she couldn’t hate herself anymore. It had happened at different times for each of them, but one after the other they’d caved, realizing that life was never going to be the same ever again, and that their snakes were the new normal, not that they were normal by any stretch of the word.
Em heard her snakes reacting to her mother’s touch and smiled. They liked it, liked her, and were showing affection in their own reptilian way. Ceto giggled as one wrapped around her finger and the sound was like pure music to Em’s soul. She slowly pulled away to look at her mother. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
Ceto leaned forward and pressed her lips to Em’s forehead. “I love you so much, Medusa. More than you could ever know.” She rose from the table and made her way into the kitchen. “Now, I’d like a cup of that tea your sister made up me earlier and I have no idea what any of these things do.” Ceto waved her hands toward the kitchen appliances.
Em laughed and went to teach her mother how to make tea. While the kettle boiled, whistling out it’s happy tune, she hugged the feeling of normalcy to her chest and committed it to memory. They made a cup for everyone and brought it to the living room with a platter of cheese, crackers, fruit, and meats for them all to share while they watched Jurassic Park. Every time her parents gasped and stared at the screen in horror and wonder, Em burst into laughter with her sister and forgot, just for a moment, that their lives were in danger.
Ceto was cringing into Phorcys’ shoulder as three velociraptors searched the kitchen for kid sized snacks when Em saw movement out of the corner of her eye and leapt to her feet.
“Fuck,” Em grumbled as she recognized Poseidon standing in the long shadows cast by the setting sun. “You nearly scared me half to death.” She frowned at the way he was standing, with one shoulder hanging lower than the other. She peered deeper into the shadows, her unnatural eyes seeing what others could not, and cursed again. “What happened to you?” Em rushed around the couch to grasp Poseidon’s arm, which was covered in long gashes and blood. She pulled him into the light and watched as his skin knit back together, leaving long smears of blood behind.
Poseidon grimaced and lifted his blood-soaked shirt, revealing an already healing pattern of intersecting cuts. “Your sisters happened.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Em stared straight ahead and tried not to let her gaze shift to Poseidon’s ass as they sliced through the Aegean toward the underwater cave where her ill-fated sisters chose to live.
It felt good to be back in the water. She tried to focus on that instead of the way his shoulders spanned his waist twice over, a fact that had always made her stomach flutter. When that didn’t work, Em shifted her focus to where they were going and why. It helped, for a moment.
The intensity of her desire to touch him came as an annoying surprise to Em. How had she not gotten over him in over two thousand years? She’d had lovers, plenty of them in fact, and had even once dated a man for nearly two years. Two years, she thought wryly, seeing the sad humor in such a short span of time. Two years to a human was one thing, but to her, it was a drop in the bucket, a very large bucket, that would never be filled. Every lover she’d ever taken had lived, aged, and died, but here he was, still young, still gorgeous, still the one man in the entire world that made her heart race.
But he’d walked away from her. Unlike her parents, whose absence was now painfully explained, Poseidon had roamed free the entirety of her banishment and yet she’d never heard from him. Not even once. Over the years, especially during the dark times, this thought had plagued her, seeping into the crevasses in her mind that splintered her rationale and dragged her down into despair and rage. He’d promised to love her forever, to protect her from Athena, and he’d failed. Worse yet, he’d failed her sisters, too. They’d been innocents in this, bystanders witness to her secret love for the god of the sea, yet they’d been punished just like her. And here she was, yearning to reach out and touch him like some lovesick girl. Well, she hadn’t been that girl for a very long time and giving into the feelings being dredged up would be like betraying her sisters all over again. She wouldn’t do it.
An arm brushed against hers, dragging Em out of her resolutions, and a wave of dizziness washed over her in equal parts pleasure, equal parts guilt, as she realized Poseidon had dropped back and was watching her intently. Em stared at him for a moment, locked in his gaze, then turned her head and moved through the salty water toward her parents, ignoring the silent hurt she’d created.
The mouth of the cave appeared like the giant maw of a prehistoric monster, deep enough that there was no trace of the brilliant sea life that made this ocean home. There was no beauty here, no sunlight to brighten the darkness. So, Em thought, as they approached the cave, this is where real monsters live.
Once more, Poseidon moved to the front of the line and lead them into the dark waters, through an intricate series of twists and turns that ended in an open cavern of fresh air that was lit with trembling torches that danced firelight across the damp stone walls.
“Come in,” their voices filled the cavern as one, ricocheting off the walls until it pounded like heavy waves against Em’s ears, “we’ve been expecting you.”
Dread skittered up Em’s spine, making her shiver. She stepped out of the water, into their lair, dripping and determined to get what she needed from them despite the childhood terror that still clung to her heart. She gritted her teeth against the phantom pain in her arm and refused to rub the perfectly healed skin. She was all grown up now. No longer a little child to be tormented and abused by her monstrous sisters. She was a monster in her own right now. Em stepped forward, keeping her eyes trained on the three women before her.
Like her, the Grey Sisters had been grievously misrepresented in mythology. Most descriptions of the sisters had them as old hags with stray wisps of hair, a single tooth between them and a crazy eyeball that got passed around a lot. While the crazy eyeball part was pretty much right on, the rest was so far off the mark that it made her wonder about humanity. The Grey Sisters, Deino, Enyo, and Pemphredo, were all absolutely stunning. They were tall and slender with flowing unnatural silver hair that flowed around them as if they were underwater. If it weren’t for their eyes, the three would have far surpassed even Em, Eury, and Thea, each of whom had been known for their beauty back in the good old days.
As a child she’d been freaked out by their empty eye sockets more than once. Of course, she had a pretty serious eye issue now as well.
Unlike the three of them, though, the Grey Sisters had never been particularly close with their parents. Instead, they’d depended on one another for everything, never separating unless forced to, which no one ever dared to do. It was as if that single eye, passed between them as naturally as most people breathed, was a lifeline that wouldn’t or couldn’t be cut. They’d never acted like part of the family, which is why Em had never felt close to them. That, and the fact that they’d tried to kill her, Eury, and Thea more than once.
Besides, it was their unyielding beauty that was the most terrifying thing about them.
Their bodies and hair were flawless, pale like rocks bleached under the midday sun and eternally young. Like many predators, like her sisters and herself, Em thought ruefully, they used their looks to lure their prey and then…
“Daughters,” Ceto stepped free of the Aegean and approached her first born children with arms extended.
Em’s entire body tensed as she watched her mother practically throw herself into the lion’s den. When Phorcys strode across the cavern to join his wife, the tension eased a bit, but never fully receded. As far as she knew, the Grey Sisters had never attacked their parents, but times changed and monsters sometimes hid their dark instincts.
She knew that fact only too well.
“Mother…” Enyo smiled, revealing the perfect white deadly tips of sharpened teeth. Em clenched her own teeth to stop herself from shuddering.
“… how nice…
” Deino floated forward as if her feet never touched the cavern floor and gathered their mother in her deceptively delicate looking arms. Long and frail, like icicles, they hid a force that could easily squeeze the life from any creature ten times her size. Em knew exactly how strong Deino was, how strong they all were beneath the façade.
“… to see you and father…” Pemphredo picked up the sentence in the eerie way they spoke.
“… at long last.” They spoke in unison now and moved to surround Ceto and Phorcys. To an outsider, it may have looked like a long-awaited reunion between daughters and their parents but, to Em, it looked as if a trio of ethereal predators, hungry for their next kill, were closing in on those she loved most.
Em’s muscles tightened painfully as she watched her parents disappear behind a circle of silver hair and raised, unnatural looking arms. Beside her, Poseidon murmured quietly, “Don’t…” and gently touched her arm.
But she couldn’t stop herself. Em stepped forward, closer to her sisters than she’d ever wanted to be, and curled her hands into fists. Around her head, her snakes rioted, hissing loudly, snapping forward towards the Grey Sisters. Deino lifted her head slowly and opened her eyes.