I painted her a picture of an arrogant man, drunk on myths about his own importance. Someone who thought everything in the world belonged to him. A bully and a blowhard, too stupid to conceal his naked ambition, destroyed by his own endless grasping when he tried to ride winged Pegasus to the peaks of Mount Olympus.
‘And he was cruel to the woman who loved him,’ I finished.
‘I see,’ Psyche replied, frowning.
We continued walking in silence. The road led through desolate country, far from any walled cities or even minor villages. The landscape was unchanging, low hills marked with rockyoutcroppings and small stands of gnarled trees. Psyche’s sandals kicked up small clouds of dust from the dry earth, and my clawed feet left only the slightest indentations.
A thought drifted to the forefront of my mind and lodged there. ‘Why did she kill herself?’
Psyche turned her head to peer at me, eyes creasing with confusion. It took me a moment to realize I had said the words aloud. ‘Anteia,’ I clarified. ‘After Bellerophon spurned her. I’ve never understood it. Mortal lives are so fragile. Why deliberately end your own?’
Psyche considered the question, tilting her head in an almost birdlike gesture. ‘I think she was heartbroken. The man she loved felt nothing for her, and she betrayed him. Besides, her husband wouldn’t have let her live after disgracing him like that.’
I glanced at Psyche in alarm but saw only solemnity in her face. I did not understand why old Proetus would feel disgraced, but the finer points of mortal marital customs continued to elude me.
We said nothing more until the sun began to sink down in the west. ‘It’s time for camp,’ Psyche said, and I saw exhaustion clinging to her like the dirt of the road. ‘Although I don’t know how we’re going to do that, as we have no supplies,’ she added with a sidelong glance at me.
‘Check the satchel,’ I said.
Psyche stared at me as though I had suggested pulling a tent post from her own nose but did as I instructed. She unslung the bag from her shoulder and reached inside, then let out a yelp of surprise as she pulled out a long wooden beam ten times longer than the satchel itself. She watched in awe as the planks unfolded themselves from the tiny scrap of fabric. Long lengths of canvas ballooned like a ship’s sails, and in a few moments a tent stood before us, arch-domed and fit for an emperor.
‘I suppose I shouldn’t have expected a god to sleep on the cold earth,’ Psyche remarked, peering up to admire the structure.
‘I would never endure such a thing.’ I shuddered at the thought. ‘And I would never ask you to do so either.’
That night, I stared at the vaulted canvas ceiling of the tent and thought about Anteia. It had been many years since I had reason to recall the wan, sad princess, but my conversation with Psyche brought me back to the halls of that old palace. An uncomfortable idea had taken up residence in my mind: Had Anteia felt the same way I did after the slip with Aphrodite’s arrow? Had she ached for Bellerophon the way I ached for Psyche now? She too had been the victim of a love curse, but I had been its cause.
I thought about what I would feel if Psyche rejected me as Bellerophon had Anteia, and my soul balked. I could not imagine the pain. Yet even that had been a clean break, before they had the chance to become rooted in each other’s lives. I had taken Psyche into my home, conversed with her, shared sleep with her. Even now she lay next to me, and I touched her leg with a toe just to assure myself she was real. To lose her now would be like tearing off a limb.
The thought robbed me of sleep, and I tossed and turned throughout the long hours of the night. Tomorrow I would speak with an old friend of mine, the god whose knowledge of humanity exceeded all others.
12
Psyche
When I woke that morning, it was to an effervescent lightness in my heart. It took me a moment to place its source. Then I remembered Cupid’s praise after my fight with the bandits, the awe and delight in his voice. I had always longed to be respected for my training, exalted even, but I had never expected to belikedfor it.
Another voice rose in my memory.Choose a man like Meleager, Atalanta once said. Someone who didn’t tolerate who I was, like Nestor would have, but cherished it instead. Though I had not found my husband in the usual manner, it seemed that in some roundabout way I had arrived at the right place.
I shook away the last tatters of my dream and pushed aside the tent flap. I saw a white horse waiting for me, perfect as a creature from legend. The new sun glowed on his flanks like the full moon.
‘It is time,’ Cupid said, flicking his tail. ‘We have almost reached him. Get on my back.’
Behind me, the miraculous tent folded itself up again into the satchel, and I took it as I climbed onto the horse’s back.
I was used to riding bareback from Atalanta’s lessons, holding with my legs as the mount picked up speed, but this wasdifferent. The world itself seemed to wheel around us, and I squeezed my eyes shut as the wind whipped tears from them.
All at once, Cupid slowed to a trot. The air smelled different, and I knew we were a long way from the place we had made camp that night. I was about to chide my husband for concealing this form of fast travel when I opened my eyes and forgot all speech. We were among the craggy fastness of mountain peaks, reaching up towards the sky. The air was thin here, and cold. I saw a sole figure chained there, bare-chested and hauntingly beautiful.
The breath left my lungs. I dismounted and approached the stranger, feeling as though I was dreaming. Cupid had told me of the purpose of our quest, but I didn’t truly understand until I sawhim.
‘Prometheus,’ I whispered.
I knew who Cupid and I had come to meet, but it was one thing to know a plan and something very different to see a god in person.
Prometheus’s bare feet scarcely touched the earth, and he was nude except for a single loincloth and the harsh silver links of the chains that cut into the soft swells of his arms. His face possessed the same sharp symmetry I had seen on Zephyrus, though there were hollows under Prometheus’s eyes and a beard that furred his chin. Curls of unkempt black hair fell over his face, and a healing wound marred his side, scabbed over with dull gold ichor.
‘Greetings, my old friend,’ Cupid said, stepping forward and shaking his mane. ‘I wanted to introduce you to my wife.’
