11
Psyche
I was naked when I woke. This startled me at first, before I recalled the events of the previous day: a mysterious stranger who called himself Zephyrus, a flight through the air. Colours shifting around me, the air filled with cacophonous sounds. My world plunged into darkness, and my wings beating futilely at walls of glass. Then finding myself gasping on the floor of the windowless bedroom, my unseen husband’s arms around me and his voice whispering gentle comfort in my ears.
I shook myself free from these wisps of thought. I rose and went to the great oak table, which was once again heavy with food. The house itself provided for me, it seemed, a miracle of the gods. One of the cats called out a greeting, but no other sound echoed from the stone walls. I was alone in a way I had rarely been throughout my short life. There had always been my parents or the palace servants, and later, Atalanta. But now I was truly alone, at least until the evening when Cupid returned.
I looked out at the sun glittering invitingly on the waters like hammered metal. The day promised to be dry and hot, and I knew at once how I wanted to spend it. The house seemed to agree with my idea; I noticed a folded cloth neatly drapedover the chair nearby. I was certain it had not been there the moment before.
I frowned at it, running the textured fabric through my fingers. I found myself watching narrow-eyed for the moment when objects in the house appeared or mended themselves, as if I might see invisible hands at work. But no, things simply winked in or out of existence, as if they had always been this way.
A swim would be good for me, I decided.
The steps winding down the cliffs were a trial, but when I arrived at the beach, I forgot my aching muscles from the beauty of it all. Seagulls snatched clams from tidal pools and flew upwards, dropping them on the rocks below to expose the tender meat. It was a clever trick, one the birds must have taught themselves.
Shell fragments littered the ground, and I had to be careful lest the sharp edges slice my tender feet as I made my way across the rocky shale. I walked to the place where the waves lapped at the shore and let them tumble over my feet. The sea belonged to the god Poseidon, but it belonged to itself as well and had moods that were separate from his. Sometimes the sea was stormy and contemptuous, at others merry and coquettish. This was one of its happier times. The sun shone through the clear waters to the sandy sea floor, and manta rays swept through the blue like the shadows of great birds.
I braided my hair and tied it tightly back. Glancing around, I was assured that no one else was watching, so I slipped out of my chiton and into the waves.
The water shocked me with its coldness, but my blood quickly warmed. I shifted smoothly into the long, reaching stroke that Atalanta taught me, losing myself in the fierce joy of pushing my muscles like a charioteer’s horses. The swim was a welcome respite from the roiling mire of thoughts that filledmy mind: the shock at my abrupt change in station, lingering puzzlement over my divine husband’s true identity.
It seemed that I lost track of my progress, or else the current took me farther out than I intended. When I looked up, the shoreline was only a distant sliver on the horizon.
Panic rose in me, but I quickly quashed it. I could swim back and sleep off the exhaustion over the long afternoon. Surely I would be able to make it.
A sound caught my attention, and I turned. A face with a bulbous head and a long snout peered at me from the water, and I recognized it as belonging to a dolphin. I had never seen one in person before, but I knew what they looked like from paintings on the pottery imported from Crete. The dolphin was sacred to a number of gods, said to rescue sailors lost at sea.
‘Hello there,’ I said to the smiling creature.
‘Hello, Psyche,’ it replied.
Later, I wasn’t sure whether I swam, flew, or simply walked on water, but when I paused to catch my breath, the dolphin’s head was much farther away than it had been before.
The dark form glided towards me, resurfacing. ‘Psyche!’ it called again. ‘It’s me!’
I recognized the voice. ‘Cupid?!’
The dolphin rolled on its side and peered at me with one onyx eye. ‘The very same. I saw you heading into deeper waters and came to help you back to shore.’
His tenderness was endearing in its way, but I would not be treated like a child by my own husband. Anger flared in me. ‘Why would you think I need your help? Are you my nursemaid? I am no infant. I was trained to hunt and fight monsters. An undertow is nothing to me.’
‘You are halfway out to sea,’ Cupid remarked. ‘Forgive me for thinking you are not immune to drowning.’
I opened my mouth to respond but was struck by the peculiarity of arguing with a speaking dolphin. ‘Is this what you actually look like?’ I interrupted. ‘I thought I would be turned to ash if I looked you in the face.’ I treaded water with long legs that were distinctly not cinders.
He clicked disapprovingly. ‘No, but your incident with the moly gave me the idea. It seems that if one of us wears a face that isn’t our own, the curse no longer binds us.’
I recalled soaring higher into the sun-soaked sky on wings as delicate as papyrus, and the distorted shapes of faces beyond the glass that contained me. Zephyrus had told me of a curse, but Cupid hadn’t mentioned it himself until now. What kind of curse could rule a god? The uncanny sense of a mistruth lodged in my mind like a splinter.
I pushed it aside. ‘How have you accomplished this?’ I asked, gesturing at his shape. ‘Have you possessed the dolphin?’
‘All gods are shape-shifters, and I am no exception.’ His tail slapped the water, throwing droplets into the air like shimmering stars.
Then why not appear to me with the face of a man?I wondered. I remembered the broad-shouldered form in the darkness. I would rather meet that shape, or something like it, instead of a dolphin.
‘Now, if you will get on my back,’ he said. ‘I will take you back to shore in time for the noon meal.’
I scowled at him. ‘I told you, I don’t need your help.’
