Psyche also wore a sceptical expression. A chuckle escaped her when she caught sight of me. ‘Are you a chicken now?’
I ruffled my feathers in consternation. ‘I am arooster, I’ll have you know. This shape covers more ground than a dolphin,’ I muttered. Apparently the magnificence of the form – golden feathers shading to fire-red, my regal bearing and fierce strut – was lost on my mortal wife.
Psyche glanced around. ‘Where are our supplies?’ she asked.
I indicated a satchel propped against the stone wall of the cliff. She shot me a look of alarm. ‘That can’t be everything. That bag couldn’t hold more than a wineskin.’
‘Haven’t each of your needs been taken care of since you arrived here?’ I said. ‘Why do you think it would be any different on the road? You travel with a god. All will be well.’
Psyche rolled her eyes at this, but she picked up the satchel and we set off, making our way down the long, winding staircase that led from the house to the beach. I led her to a path that ran through the dry, dusty hills, walking until we could no longer hear the sea crashing against the rocks.
It was not long before we were ambushed by a group of bandits, emerging from the craggy landscape like malevolent spirits. They were men with no city who made their living preying on unwary travellers, and I suppose we seemed like easy pickings: a lone woman travelling with an elegant pet.
Two bandits emerged from the scrub brush in front of us. When I whirled around, I saw two more on the road behind us. They all bore blades pitted with rust and unrelenting expressions.
I was no warrior; my arrows were not made for battle. Besides, I was unprepared to see mortals act like this. I was a god, accustomed to being worshipped. I was used to humans being obsequious or oblivious, not threatening.
I pondered my next course of action, but Psyche was faster.
She pulled an arrow from her quiver and shot the man closest to me in the throat. He fell clutching the shaft, wearing an expression of absolute bewilderment. A moment later an arrow lodged itself in the chest of his companion, who gave a brief shocked cry.
Psyche whirled in the opposite direction. One of the bandits behind us charged, his mouth open in a battle snarl as he swung an axe. He was enormous, shoulders as wide as an ox, and for a second Psyche was frozen by the animal shock that comes with facing something much larger than yourself.
Psyche scrabbled backwards, away from the man’s charge, and nearly stumbled into the dust. A scream rose in my throat, but she quickly recovered herself. She ducked into the opening left by his wide stance, pulling her knife from its sheath and dragging it along the outside of the man’s thigh. The bandit howled with agony and swung wildly at her, but she had already jumped out of reach.
The last of the bandits, a lanky man in the most ragged clothing I had ever seen, didn’t even bother to challenge her. Instead, he grabbed the man she had just stabbed and dragged him into the maze of low rock and brush around the path. A trail of spattered blood on the dry earth was the only sign of their passage.
I had seen Ares and Athena, the gods of war, fight in the skirmishes that cropped up among divinities, but Psyche moved differently. Less perfect and slower, though with a beauty that drew the eye. Athena and Ares would never have stumbled ornearly fallen when facing an enemy, and never would have recovered themselves so well either. It was like comparing the cold unyielding beauty of the stars to the bloom of a flower, something impermanent and imperfect but all the more lovely for it. Psyche wasn’t fighting because she was born to it; she was fighting because she loved it.
Psyche was breathing hard, bloodied knife in her hands.
‘Now I understand what you meant when you said you were trained to fight monsters,’ I said. ‘Where did you learn to move like that?’
Psyche glanced at me and grinned, becoming once again a young mortal girl instead of a fighter of shocking skill. ‘I was taught by a hero, Atalanta,’ she replied, ‘to fulfill the prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi, that I would conquer a monster feared by the gods. But I’ve never killed a person before. I’ve never needed to.’ Psyche reached up to smooth back her hair, and now I saw that her hands were shaking, that her smile wavered at the corners.
‘They would have killed you without a second thought if you hadn’t done it first,’ I assured her.
Psyche’s gaze swung towards me. ‘You know,’ she said wryly, ‘most men would be ashamed that they could not protect their wife from bandits.’
I spread my wings in mock surrender. ‘Then it is good that I am not a man. And why should I be ashamed to have a wife who can fight like you? You move like a whirlwind. I’ve never seen the like.’
Psyche flushed, pink showing through her brown skin, and glanced away from me. ‘I should leave coins in their mouths, to pay their passage across the Styx,’ she said, considering the forms of the two arrow-struck men. ‘But I have none.’
Dust still drifted through the air, kicked up by swift-movingfeet. I began to groom my feathers to ensure no dirt dulled their brightness. ‘Check the satchel,’ I told Psyche.
She looked at me in confusion, which only increased when she dipped one hand into the satchel and pulled out a pair of small objects that glinted in the sun. Two coins, enough to set the souls of the bandits at rest.
We continued on our way. Sweat beaded on Psyche’s brow as she stared vacantly ahead. I could tell something weighed on her mind. ‘I always thought I would become a hero one day,’ she said at last, ‘instead of merely an executioner of bandits. I thought I would be like Bellerophon or—’
My feathers ruffled in agitation as I remembered the so-called hero who had rejected Anteia so cruelly. ‘You’re better off as you are. Bellerophon was a great fool.’And not nearly as beautiful as you, I did not add.
‘Bellerophon was brilliant!’ she shot back.
‘He was a fool,’ I repeated. I had never forgotten the sneer on Bellerophon’s face as he pushed Anteia away.
‘If you know so much about Bellerophon,’ Psyche snapped, ‘then by all means, enlighten me.’
I did.
