‘Well, you carried me.’
‘And you stayed on. The crocodiles did not attack you, the hippos left you alone. It was not all me, that journey.’
I believe her. I would not have before, but here, feeling the tremor in my bones and blood, in the full resonance of this place, I do. I wish to submerge in it, to be wholly part of it. I make to swim forward, to sink below and revel in this homecoming, but Ceto catches me. Her fingers are cool on my shoulders.
‘Wait.’ She points ahead. The river becomes the lake a few strokes away. The water shifts from silted green and is suddenly so clear that everything from the sky above tothe lush banks is twinned and reversed before me. I look at Ceto, I ready myself, I try to see myself in her eyes in preparation but I cannot. Their depths calm me, though, like the lull before sleep, and I swim forward.
I have seen the shape of myself before, but it is precision that holds the prize. I churn internally. First, there is a great gulf, a sense of a seismic, unknowable distance between what I see and who I am. It is not, initially, my face itself that shocks me. It is that I cannot make sense of what I see asself. I can only know it as I have known all beings; it is separate, it is another. But I also, simultaneously, know that thisotheris me.
When I was small, my teeth started to fall out and I was horrified. I knew this happened to other children, had seen their gap-toothed grins and felt sickened by their tongues, poking at pink, shiny gums. It had not occurred that this would happen to me, and when it did, I immediately heaved, neck sticky, lips glossy with blood and spit. More awful still was the sensation of new teeth pushing through, the sudden understanding that my body was opaque to me, existing beyond the precocious diligence of my ruling. I wonder now if all people feel this way, if everyone that ever sees their own face clearly for the first time tries to align the self with the stranger and feels this estrangement.
And then there are the details. The nose, the eyes, the shape of my mouth – the indescribable yet undeniable more of me that only water this clear – or perhaps it had to bethislake, from which so much of me comes – can show. I feel a horrifying ambivalence; a hatred for this divine being that is so at odds with the messy, confused, cowardly person that I know myself to be, and a yearning to live up to theexpectations held by that face. The face of the girl in the lake. But I understand the sideways looks now, the whispers, the wariness. I am beautiful. I am more than beautiful. My skin is dark, so dark, darker than either of my parents’, that it shines with something heavenly. My eyes are like cooked honey, my hair is thick, weighted with water in springs past my shoulders. I am softness personified. Full and inviting,who wouldn’t want a bite?I am dazzling. I despise it.
‘I am lovely,’ I say in horror.
‘Yes,’ says Ceto.
‘It is too much.’
She says nothing.
‘Why did you take me here?’ I am panicking now and the panic is eating at the magic I had been full of. ‘Why did you show me?’
She is surprised by my response but not disappointed. She almost looks relieved. ‘I wanted you to see that there is a whole world out here. There is somuch.Somuch. You have not seen it. You will not see it when you are married. I also wanted you to see your face and know, with absolute certainty, that I will say yes, when the time comes.’
‘Good! My mother will live!’ I cling to the refrain of the last three years.I am the most beautiful. I will be Queen of the Sea. My mother will live.
‘Meda.’
I see some of my own panic in her face. She masticates her terror, tries to swallow and digest it, but I spare her.
‘You do not want me to marry your lord.’
She does not answer. This is affirmation enough. ‘You fear for me.’
Still no answer.
‘Why? I will be queen. I will be his wife?’ Even as I hear the plea in my voice, I feel a pressure descend on me. The heavy gaze of two grey eyes, swung like lamps towards us.
Ceto taps her tongue against her teeth, murmurs to herself, testing the oath, and then, ‘The river creatures that answer to you – the fish, the birds, the otters. They follow you in awe and fondness. They do not fear you, they respect you. They flock to you like sheep to a shepherd.’
‘Yes. And so?’
‘It isnotso in the sea. Poseidon, my master, is great and terrible. He is brother of Zeus and Hades. And he alone stands bachelor. Within him dwells all the untamed force of all the oceans. He is lord of storms and earthquakes and the great waves that swallow islands. My master is great and terrible,’ she says again, ‘and so every great and terrible thing you have heard is true.’
‘I am descended of Nilus, favoured by Athena.’
‘Athena cannot always protect you. Her priestess learned this lesson.’
I know this story, of course. It is as I have feared. He will drown me, he will pound and erode until I am dust.
‘So you have brought me all this way to scare me!’ I am trembling. ‘The oath is made. It is as it will be. I cannot get out of it.’
‘Do you know how I know about the limitations of my oath? About what is permitted and what is not?’
I shake my head.
‘I tried,’ she answers simply. ‘It is like testing the strength of shackles. It is like dipping a toe into fire and seeing how long until it burns.’
