His lips moved again, and her heart lurched.
She curled her fingers around his bony hand. ‘Can you hear me?’
His eyes remained closed, but finally sound croaked from his lips. ‘Megara.’
The name pierced Danae’s chest like an arrow.
Heracles’ wife. The woman he had murdered, along with their children, when Hera drugged him and temporarily drove him mad.
She wanted to pull her hand away, but she did not. He would remember his wife was dead soon enough. She would not take this moment of merciful forgetting from him.
Squeezing his fingers, she leant in close. ‘I’m here, my love. I’m here.’
The ghost of a smile parted his lips and his eyelids grew still. Danae waited until his breath had fallen back into the rhythm of deep sleep, then she slipped her hand from his.
It hurt, hearing him speak another woman’s name, but not in the way it should. As she sat back on her heels, it was not heartache that burned through her chest, but shame.
She eased herself to her feet and stepped out of the hut, filling her lungs with fresh, salty air. She looked up towards the crest of the hill, but Metis was hidden from view.
When searching for Prometheus, Danae may have had a false idea of what the Titan would be like, but at least she’d heard of him. Metis was a mystery. Despite her time in the Underworld there was still so much Danae did not know: what it really meant to be a Titan, the truth of how the gods became the Olympian Twelve, the identity of the Mother.
You must learn Metis’ secrets, said the voice.
‘Yes,’ Danae murmured.
A current of unease rippled through her as she thought of what Metis had said about the voice. ‘You were wrong. Metis was not pleased.’
She guards her knowledge. She does not want to teach you.
Danae had worried as much herself. The way Metis had looked at her by the crop of flowers, it was almost as though the woman was afraid of her.
‘Are you good?’
For a breath, the voice did not respond.
I want you to be strong.
Danae’s pulse quickened. ‘What if, to be strong, I must do terrible things?’
The voice did not answer.
Weariness crept into her bones. Turning back to the hut,she caught sight of Pegasus soaring across the island, then out over the ocean. It was rare for her to see him in flight. Usually, when he was airborne, she was on his back. She marvelled at his grace and the great span of his gleaming white wings as they beat against the wind.
She did not worry as he chased the sun across the sky, growing smaller and smaller in the midst of all that blue. He always came back.
Metis did not return to the hut until long after the sun had fled the sky. The woman barely spoke to Danae when she finally crept back inside, pausing briefly to inspect the pulverized leaves, before smearing the paste on Heracles’ lips. The hero had remained unconscious since he’d spoken his dead wife’s name.
They ate their rations of cicadas in silence, Danae resolved to wait for Metis to reveal her secrets rather than trying to prise them from her.
As she lay in the dark, eyes wide against the gloom, Danae thought of Atalanta and Telamon and prayed to the fates that they would find their way swiftly to Delos.
The next morning, when dawn banished the shadows from the hut, Metis shook Danae awake and led her down the hillside towards the lake. They paused by a nondescript stretch of rocky earth, and Metis crouched, pointing to one of the little flowers protruding from the dried grass. It was a tiny lilac bloom, each petal barely the size of a baby’s fingernail.
‘See this?’ Metis pointed. ‘I want you to grow it a new leaf.’
Danae frowned, wrapping her arms around herself to stave off the chill from the wind. ‘How?’
‘Just give it a go.’
