‘Certainly I would miss them.’
‘Then—’
‘You do not have sisters. You would not understand.’
I watch the activity up and down the river, boats and barges preparing for the afternoon. It will all begin soon. Dancing and music and wrestling. Men riding elephants and performing clever tricks on their backs, vendors selling trinkets. My people are skilled, the food will be delicious, the day shall be an entertaining one. But I cannot wholly deny the heaviness and so I try a small morsel of truth for the one that she offered me.
‘Perhaps it is easier for you to imagine another life. Your body is one thing one moment and another thing the next. I am only what I am.’
‘And I am only the sea god’s guard worm, remember? Do not play at passive when you have spent so long insisting thatIam the slave and you are free to do as you wish.’
I recoil as if I have been rebuffed. I had been offering her something, a piece of myself conceded, but now I am damned once more and seen entirely too clearly.
‘I don’tplay at passive! You just can’t believe that I mightactuallylikeall this! Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I enjoy my nice dresses and jewellery and fuss? That I want to be Queen of the Sea?’ I swallow against the crushing vice conjured by those words, the weighty breathlessness that promises suffocation, and plough on defensively. ‘I do not resent my mother’s oath as you resent your father’s. Of course you are unsatisfied. You gain nothing from your servitude. I will gain everything – all the oceans, my family’s prosperity, the fulfilment of my duty. There can be no greater honour! So do not assume I am so discontented.’
‘You are good at many things, myMeda. Lying is one of them. But I see you.’ Her twisting of my name enrages me more.Andromedais queen, is ruler of men in the language of my father and his gods.Medais shrewd, a deceiver.Cunning, she names me. It courses through me in a heady rush; I love it. I hate her for it.
‘I do not lie!’ I stamp my foot. ‘And donotcall me that! It is you that lies! You say I am as much the servant as you but you do not really think that. If you did, you would treat me with the sympathy of a fellow slave. But you do not! You are jealous of what I have and are angry that I do not do with it as you would. But I am not you! And I am glad for it!Youdon’t even want to be you – who would rather be monstrous than beautiful?’ I say it and again feel that tearing, that division. Things of which I have been so sure dissolve to ash at her touch; I would rather be the person I play at than admit how close she roves to the truth.
‘You are right,’ she sneers, ‘I do not treat you with sympathy. Why should I? You will not admit that your mother’s oath imprisons you as my father’s oath imprisons me. You do not strive for what freedom you can find, youdo not seek to understand your godhood, you do not even leave the palace grounds. It ispathetic. You will not even tell your mother that you do not like it when she dresses you in white.’
‘I do—’
‘No, you don’t. You are happiest here, in the mud and water.’
‘And? And so? We do not each get to live our perfect lives. I am beautiful. I will be Queen of the Sea and my mother will live. I am fortunate. Do not expect me towallowas you do just because I do not get my way.’
‘I do not wallow!’ And now she is not laughing. She is coiling tightly; I sense a looming nadir that I should not reach beyond, but I am not used to being so bared. I wish to snatch at her skin and cover myself with it. I wish to see her also exposed.
‘You do. I see it. And Achiroe sees it too.’ My voice is low, I am almost breathless, as if I have been running. ‘You are always worse the nights that you stay away the shortest. You dare to callmepathetic, worm? When you are such a sulk that you have no friends in the Coral Kingdom? You have nothing better to do than return when the moon is still high and sit on the banks and look up at my window.Youare pathetic.’
She did not know I knew this. I had not known what to make of it myself. But, after two years, I have succeeded. I have peeled back her many layers and found something soft and pliant. I can see the ripple of it across her face as my words dig in like nails.
‘Go fuck yourself.’ She attempts that low, devastating, wounding tone but it falls short, her words catch and whisper.I do not feel victorious and perhaps this is a sign that I should stop but I don’t, I can’t.
‘Oaths cannot be broken. You know that better than anyone. One would think you would have become accustomed to your position, but apparently you prefer to dwell in the misery of your existence. But you and I are not the same. My existence is not a misery. I am adored.’
‘Are you? Or are you just valued? You are so desperate to be loved that you will sell yourself eternally.’
‘What do you understand of love? Everyone who is supposed to love you does not.’Stop, Andromeda, stop.
‘Fuck you.’
‘You prove my words truer still. Clearly, they give profanity and insults instead of gifts on birthdays. Perhaps no one’s ever bothered to give you anything but neglect and cruelty. I cannot say that I blame them for it.’Stop, stop, stop!
She springs. Her tight coils bunch and loosen and I think she is going to strike or to leap at me. Her orders must forbid her harming me because I would deserve it. Her arm arcs back, her wrist flicks and something flies towards me. I duck but it lands deliberately at my feet, splattering my white hems with red-brown. Panic of what my mother will say erases my other thoughts and I leap back, cursing. I reach into the mud. It is hard to immediately find it. It is almost the same colour as the clay, orange-red and submerged. I hold it between two fingers and away from my dress so that it does not drip.
It is a hippo. Twin to the one I have, that I carry around with me always, smoothing it with my fingers in anxious habit. This one is carved just as cleverly, perhaps even more so. It is made from coral.
I feel my bottom lip fall loose. My chest is tight, and I cannot breathe.
‘To my Meda,’ Ceto hisses the words. ‘May your years be many and fruitful.’
I look up. But she has gone.
The sacrifices open the day. Two dozen bulls, black for Nilus and white for my future husband. The black bulls’ blood is poured on to the banks, saturating the mud to a madder slurry. The whites’ is poured into the river, where it whirls as if stirred by a giant finger. This is seen as another sign of good fortune, though I see my grandmother, on the eastern banks, watching with a wrinkled nose. The pageants follow. My mother, father and I watch from a raised dais, just beyond the orange trees.
Rows and rows of girls flash wrists, ankles, soft strips of waist. They are not the girls I grew up with, that first cohort who taught me loneliness. Those are all married with children now, seated with their mothers behind my own, part of some group to which I have not yet been permitted entry and, given what is to come, likely never will. Not according to the language of my father and his gods.Kore, young maidens, those who spin and shine and try not to bump into each other, whirligig beetles in shallow pools. I remember some of them being born, have seen their transition from naked potbellies to gentle curves. Their older sisters, my sideways-staring peers, arenymphae, young brides. In time they will all becomegynae, women. But only when they have had children. Womanhood must be earned. I will simply become a goddess and a queen and that will be that. Set apart and alone but this, at least, is familiar. Just as I have alwaysbeenprincess, alwayslittle queen, no one will bother to distinguish me beyond this.
