“I saw what you did to her.” Eleni’s eyes were wild, her voice strangled with grief. “I found her heart in your hands.”
Danae stared at her mother, her head pounding with every word.
“I didn’t... I would never hurt Alea. Ma, please—”
“No!” Eleni raised the knife between them as Danae struggled against the rope. “You will not use your evil magic on me.”
“Evil magic? Ma, I’m Danae. I’m your daughter... I didn’t kill her!”
The knife shook in her mother’s hand. “You may have taken her skin, but you are not my Danae.” She twisted her face away. “I can’t look at you...you’re so like her.” She drew a deep breath. “They will be here soon, then it will all be over.” Then she turned and ran back into the hut.
“What do you mean? Who’s coming? Ma!”
Her mother shut the door.
“Don’t leave me!”
Danae screamed herself raw, but her mother didn’t come out again.
Maybe shewaspossessed. Her thoughts kept returning to the tree, the deep pull she’d felt, the warmth bleeding out from her hands across Alea’s skin and those strange threads of light. The sight of her sister’s body had unleashed a tide of memory. In her trancelike state, the twisted branches and golden apples had seemed so real; the sand, sea and Alea were like a dream.
It was impossible, a tree could not sprout from a dead human heart and grow to maturity in a matter of moments. Only the gods had that kind of power. She searched every corner of her mind, but the last thing she could remember was taking a bite out of one of the golden apples. Then nothing.
A sob lodged in the back of her throat. This was all wrong. She should be inside helping her mother prepare her sister’s body for the burial rights. Alea would be on her way to the Asphodel Meadows now. Death had finally done what Danae could not and taken away her sister’s pain.
She stiffened. There was movement in the distance. Someone was coming up the path. Fear came flooding back. Squirming, she tried desperately to prize her hands free.
As the figure drew closer, she stopped struggling.
With the habit of one who’d spent a lifetime rising early and creeping out of the hut, her father silently eased open the yard gate.
Danae opened her mouth, but he raised a finger to his lips.
Swiftly, he ran to her, and with fisherman-nimble hands, undid her bindings. His sweat reeked of stale wine, and his eyes were sunken and bloodshot, but he looked at her like he always did, like she was his little Danie.
Her legs were stiff from sitting, and he had to help her to her feet. She caught sight of her hands and faltered. They were crusted with dried blood.
“It’s all right,” he whispered and took her stained fingers in his calloused ones.
As they crossed the yard, she stared at the hut door, convinced at any moment it would burst open and her mother would fly at her with the knife. But they ran through the gate without discovery.
“Pa,” she gasped as they sprinted down the pebble-strewn path. “I didn’t do it.”
“I know.”
She faltered when they reached the sand. The beach stretched out before them, turquoise waves lapping at the shore. The only place she’d ever felt truly at home, the place that had taken the one she loved the most.
The tree wasn’t there.
“Come on.” Her father tugged her arm. “We need to get to the boat.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain when we’re at sea.”
Dragging her eyes from the spot where she’d found Alea’s body, she let him pull her across the beach to the little cove where Odell kept his fishing vessel, clinging tightly to his large, warm hands.
They waded into the water, and her father untied the mooring rope while she clambered aboard. It was a small tub, just a pair of oars and one sail, and it always stank of fish, even when it was empty. She stared at the stained planks, shimmering with loose scales. Her father wound the rope around his arm and heaved himself into the boat, easing down between the oars with a grunt.
