I told him about my glimpse of the Underworld, that place of dead forests and mist and winding rivers. As a god, he couldnever go there, and he was curious about it. I told him about meeting Medusa and what she had said to me about heroes. He remarked that she had a point, and only laughed when I scowled at him.
Our nights were spent doing other things.
Cupid seemed to know a seemingly endless variety of ways that two bodies could come together in pleasure, and I was all too pleased to learn. There were times when I felt as I had when I had been a butterfly: thoughtless, warm, floating in bliss.
One night as we lay beneath the covers in the darkness, Cupid told me haltingly of something he had seen long ago. ‘A mortal man and woman,’ he began. ‘Of the wrinkly kind.’
I bit back a laugh. ‘Elderly, you mean?’
‘I think so, but that’s not the point. They were so gentle with each other, such tenderness flowed between them. I had seen them once when I was younger, but this was different. What did it mean?’
‘It’s nothing very mysterious,’ I told him. ‘I think they were just in love.’
Love. I had never had much use for the concept, had never gone to the altars of Aphrodite or her sweet-cheeked son Eros begging for some pretty youth to notice me. Even now I didn’t think of love, not in the abstract – I only thought of Cupid, and waited with bated breath for night to fall so that I could take him in my arms again.
Eventually we returned to the seaside house, where I found several letters of increasing concern from my parents waiting for me. They rejoiced that I was well but were alarmed at the husband I mentioned. They knew nothing of Cupid.
My hands clenched the edge of the table, white-knuckled. My mother had not arranged the match after all. I tried to tellmyself that it didn’t matter, that everything had worked out for the best, but I could not ignore the unease that settled into my heart like a nest of fruit flies in a rubbish heap.
Happy though I was during those weeks after I returned from the Underworld, I felt a certain listlessness. Sometimes Medusa’s words would echo in my head, or I would wonder about the human world I had left behind. The monster that supposedly hunted me had never materialized; I knew it could not be the monster that had destroyed the village, since that had been Zephyrus. The wind god had paid his promised share of the repairs for the village, I learned from my parents’ letter, in the form of ancient gold coinage mysteriously dropped from the sky over Tiryns.
After a tirade at Zephyrus for his trick with the moly, I accepted his sincere apology. Since then, he had begun to visit regularly, and I found that his company made the time go faster during the long daylit hours when my husband was away.
‘Are things supposed to be this easy? Being with him, I mean,’ I asked Zephyrus one day as we sipped wine on the terrace overlooking the ocean.
‘Theyshouldalways be so easy,’ Zephyrus replied. ‘Not every marriage has to be a travesty like that of Zeus and Hera. Things were easy for Hyacinthos and me too before he died.’ There was a trace of wistfulness in the curve of his mouth, but it soon vanished.
Even during these golden times, doubt crouched in wait. The fact remained that I was mortal and Cupid was a god. He would be my entire life, and I would only be a brief passerby in his.
There was also the fact that he still would not let me see his face. I began to wonder if I truly would immolate under his regard, or if there was something else he was hiding from me.It was too convenient that he could steal the face of an animal during the daylight hours, only to come to me in the shape of a man at night.
During the nights of the new moon, we went outside to lie on the flagstones of the terraces, looking up at the undimmed stars. We would point out the constellations that the gods placed in the sky and tell each other stories about them. I knew the versions passed among mortals, but my husband told the old tales as though he had actually been there; indeed, in some cases, he had. We bickered over whose version was better.
I snuck glances at him in the starlight, but I could never quite make out his features. I tried to persuade him outside on the nights of the full moon, when I was sure to catch at least a glimpse of his face, but he always refused.
Eros
I began to notice things that I had not truly seen in a thousand years. I saw how the cats played and the peacocks set themselves on display. I became aware of the intricate beauty of the flowers that grew along the terrace, tended by the magic of the seaside house. Before, my days had been numberless and weightless, but now everything was thrown into sharp relief. The curse, now declawed, sang within me. With Psyche, my life was limned in gold.
I found that I liked having someone to talk to in the evenings. If I saw some particularly arresting sight or amusing occurrence during the day, I would thinkI cannot wait to tell Psyche about this later. I would imagine the sound of her laugh and feel asthough I was soaring high above the earth even when my feet were solidly planted on the ground.
I was wise enough to know that my happiness was balanced on the edge of a knife. By loving Psyche, I was setting myself up for tragedy. Even if I somehow managed to keep her safe from Aphrodite and to circumvent the curse, the fact remained she was mortal and I was not, a gulf that yawned between us.
‘If I could go back,’ Zephyrus said, ‘I would have ensured that I gave Hyacinthos his apotheosis. Just so I could have him with me, if nothing else. You still have time with Psyche.’ He shot me a glance. ‘Don’t waste it.’
I leaned back. We were in my favourite forest grove, sunlight falling through the trees like coloured glass, dappling the brush in the shaded colours of a tiger’s fur. I came here during the day when Psyche roamed around the seaside house, to ensure that she did not catch sight of my face and set off the curse in its completeness. Sometimes Zephyrus joined me.
‘Not every mortal can achieve apotheosis,’ I replied, speaking of the process that transformed mortals into gods. ‘Only those who have distinguished themselves. Also, the majority of gods must approve, and when have they ever all agreed on one thing? Aphrodite would forbid it, certainly.’ I’d thought about this more than once, my mind going around in wheels within wheels, and I had found no resolution to the problem. My love for Psyche had to remain a secret.
Zephyrus was drifting through the air like a swimmer upon a river, reclining on his back with one knee up, his hands laced behind his head. ‘Well, don’t blame me if her mortality proves more fragile than you thought.’
Despite this, I still thought that all might turn out well. At least until the day I found an intruder picking my roses.
The roses grew on my terrace in abundant bloom. Therewas not a season that those velvet petals did not grace this arid place, a piece of magic I delighted in. But now someone was tangling with them, rustling the leaves, and breaking off the lovely blossoms. Golden hair flowed down her back.
The figure turned, and I recognized my sister Eris. She had not aged, of course, but the passage of time had sharpened her features, making them crueller and leaner. More herself, in other words.
‘Ah, dearest brother,’ she said with a smile that did not reach her eyes. ‘I was wondering when you’d come to greet me.’ Her falsity put me in mind of Aphrodite; gods are always polite when they despise one another. We prefer vengeance by proxy.
