Aphrodite had been sitting in a corner, a dim form in the darkness. She rose now. I could hear her footsteps approaching, and she stopped when her face was only a few inches from mine, close enough to feel her breath on my cheek. It was a horrible reversal of my nights with Psyche – which was probably exactly what Aphrodite intended.
I couldn’t see the ugly twist of Aphrodite’s face, but I could imagine it all too clearly. I knew how she liked to gloat over her conquests, romantic and otherwise. I tugged the cuffs, jangling the chains.
‘Don’t bother trying to break out of those,’ Aphrodite commented. ‘Their only twin binds Prometheus. Hephaestus madethem for me himself, though you’ll be glad to know I didn’t tell him who they were intended for.’
‘How kind of you,’ I replied, trying to see how far I could lower my arm. ‘It would certainly put a damper on my friendship with your husband if he knew he forged the chains of my imprisonment.’
‘You are in no position to be making jokes,’ Aphrodite said darkly. ‘You know, this whole affair reminds me of something that happened to my mortal friend Paris, prince of Troy. His parents tried to abandon him in the wilderness, but instead he was taken in and raised by a herdsman. I suppose it’s not an exact parallel to your situation, though – when you took the princess into your home, you decided to fuck her instead.’
My heart was pounding in my ears. ‘What have you done to Psyche?’ I demanded.
‘Nothing at all. I’ve decided to leave that little vixen to her own devices for now, though I might still send her into the Underworld as payback for Adonis,’ Aphrodite said, her breath spraying over my face. ‘But you are my focus now, and I intend to hold you accountable for all of your numerous crimes.’
I heard Aphrodite’s steps move around me in a circle like a vulture around a carcass as she named all these slights. I pictured her tallying them on her long, elegant fingers. ‘Lying about the completion of your task, allying yourself with one of my enemies and hiding her for months, and demanding a favour in return for something you never did. That love antidote would never have worked, you know,’ she added. ‘Mothers must keep their children in line, and I have been too lenient with you.’
‘What do you want from me?’ I asked, sagging against the cuffs.
‘Oh, nothing but your suffering,’ Aphrodite said sweetly. ‘Compensation for all the times you’ve wronged me. I’ve gotyou in a storeroom below Mount Olympus, a place where no one goes. I have all the time in the world for your punishment.’
‘Aphrodite,’ I said, growing somewhat shaken. ‘This is ridiculous. Let us go before Zeus and have him arbitrate.’
She chuckled, long and low. ‘Oh, my dear son, I have already spoken to Zeus. He was the one who offered me the use of this room. He’s as weary of your mischief as I am.’
Wasn’t the curse enough?I thought.Binding me to someone only to forbid me from seeing her – wasn’t that enough?
‘What do you have planned?’ I asked, managing a certain insouciance. ‘Will a wolf eat my heart day after day? Will you fill this cell with water and watch me drown over and over again?’
‘No. That’s too good for you – it gives you something to do, a method for tracking your days,’ Aphrodite said, her words dripping wicked pleasure. ‘No, I shall simply leave you here, with nothing to do and no food to eat and no one to talk to, until the end of time.’
With that, she left, enclosing me in fathomless darkness.
22
Psyche
A few days later, I came into sight of a remote mountain village. It was scarcely more than a cluster of little houses wreathed with smoke from cookfires, but to me it was as grand as a palace. Here I could find rest and a bit of nourishment before I headed on to Tiryns.
I was beyond exhausted. Thorns tattered my clothing, and the soles of my feet were gashed and scraped. Atalanta had forced me to train barefoot, but even she had not prepared me for days on end alone in the wilderness without even the most meagre of supplies.
I walked past the fields and into the little dirt lane that served as the main road of this place. The people of this village lived much as their ancestors had after Prometheus shaped them from clay, scratching a paltry living from the dirt and pasturing their herds of lean goats in the high meadows. It was a life of grinding difficulty, and they were a suspicious lot.
I strode towards the first person I spotted, a young man feeding chickens in the shadow of a rickety house. I called on the ancient law of xenia, the hospitality ordained by the gods. The young man stared at me open-mouthed, grains falling through his open fingers like sand in an hourglass. I could imaginewhat he saw: a woman like a ghost come from the forest. The colour of my skin marked me as a stranger to these arid lands, and I wore only sleeping clothes without so much as a veil for propriety.
The young man took me to the chieftain, whose hut was only slightly bigger than the others. He was a granite-faced man as unyielding as the mountains themselves, and his eyes crawled over my body.
‘Where is your father, lady? Your husband?’ he asked.
‘I was separated from my husband during a raid on our caravan,’ I lied. ‘I must get back to my family in Mycenae. In the name of xenia, I ask your assistance—’
The old chieftain waved a hand, cutting me off. ‘You shall have it. We are no strangers to the laws of Zeus.’ But even when an older woman arrived to lead me away, his eyes still lingered on my backside.
A tin tub filled with lukewarm water and a hard lump of lye soap were all the woman offered. I had known there were people who lived like this, but I had never experienced such poverty myself. It was a far cry from the luxurious baths at the seaside house, but I made do. I wouldn’t be here long.
The woman was a decade or so older than me, stout as a mule, with fish-belly-pale skin and a hard face. I decided she must be the chieftain’s wife.
The woman took a seat at the head of the tub as I lowered myself and began to scrub. ‘It is said,’ she began, ‘that the husband is the head of the household. The wife serves him, but there is happiness in that service if you do it well. Even if he is heavy with his hands or short with his tongue, a closed mouth and a lowered gaze are your best responses. It’s simply the way of things. Marriage may be hard, but life is easier with twopeople.’ The set of her mouth was firm. ‘You will understand when you have children yourself.’
A knife of panic pierced my belly, and I drew my limbs together protectively. It had been less than a fortnight since Eros’s remark about my two heartbeats, but perhaps this woman could read the subtle changes of my body that signalled pregnancy, see the floating spark in my womb.
