‘You have … you have tried to break free.’ I feel foolish for it not having occurred to me earlier.
Her eyes answer.Obviously.She swims to the banks and pulls herself from the water. I follow her, glad to be away from the view of that face. She runs a hand through her hair, twisting the thick dark coil around and around her wrist.
‘The oath was made on my behalf millennia before I was even born, after the fall of the Titans, our shared grandsires. Nereus is like Nilus; he did not fight in the Great War but is still a member of the old guard. He had to submit to the new Lord of the Sea or risk being banished to Tartarus.’ She leans back and her eyes are remote, removed. ‘And then I was born – the last of fifty and unexpected. I was asked to swear anew, but of course the choice was not mine. My father had bent his knee and I am of his line. I was born on bent knees. And so I cannot lie to my master. I cannot disobey a direct order.’
Her gaze returns to my face, scrutinizing. ‘But I am loyal and so he is careless with his orders. He would not think that I would undermine him. I am … a good servant.’
This is what she has brought me here to tell me. She had so little in the way of options and yet she has sought her freedom. She has clung to what little of it she can reach. I have not even tried. I did not think it worth the attempt, I did not believe my life, that small life – because Ceto is right, itissmall – worth the fight.
‘Why do you care what happens to me?’ I do not think she will answer; it takes long moments for her to speak. But then she does, and I am surprised again.
‘Is it so hard to believe that after three years at your side, I would find it difficult to bear if you came to harm?’
I do not know what to say to this. I think again of the jagged coral dripping blood; I did not know red and red could be so clashing. ‘It is why you have always been so angry with me. It is because I was so accepting.’
‘I believe you to be more than your face. You have been so determined to contradict me and I do not like to be contradicted.’
I chuckle. ‘Do you not? I hadn’t noticed.’
I dare myself to meet her unflinching gaze. Despite the shared fear, it is the most at ease I have seen her. Her shoulders are loose and now her mouth quirks in that way that challenges me, makes me want to play and fight and play some more. The sprouting bud between us turns this way and that, facing each of us, hoping we will give it what it needs.
‘I was angry with you too. You would not allow my blissful pretence. And it seemed so much easier to be you. I felt you had all the power I wanted and none of the responsibility.’
She snorts and trails her hand through the air.
‘You are not so powerless, Meda.’
I imitate her and feel the air ripple in response. ‘No. I am not.’
She smiles at me. I smile back. The sprouting bud blooms, basking in our conjoined light.
‘I don’t suppose anyone would think that I would not want to marry him,’ I say slowly, ‘that I would not want to be Queen of the Sea. What I want doesn’t matter, after all. My father would gain an Olympian as a son and my mother would be spared.’
‘Yes,’ she says solemnly.
‘Everyone assumes that I want what they want; to last,to be known. You have called me small and perhaps I am – I would have been happy here, with my small life.’
‘That is not what I meant when I called you small.’
We regard each other. Asserting myself over a future that covets peace and anonymity is still self-assertion. I have never thought about it this way before. She is the first to suggest that I might decide to want.
So what do I want?
She sits, watching me, her head tilted. We are close, closer than we have ever been. The column of her neck is lit by the dying light, water runs off it like nectar. She is not so quick to dry as she once was, her naiad blood recognizing her frequent freshwater visits and rising to her surface. All at once I wish to run my tongue along her skin, to taste its sweet ambrosia. The memory of her body beneath mine, tangling as we had once grappled in the dust, is tangible. But I feel those grey eyes upon me still, then think of Nilus, absent now but who could return at any time. There is nothing I want less than my strange, stern great-grandfather, with whom I have spoken but a handful of times, witnessing that desire made manifest. I should fear this wanting, I have never felt its like before, never felt anything that even resembled it, but I do not, just as I should fear her but I do not.
‘I suppose there might be something in being underestimated and unexpected. Freedom, I think. That way, people will always ask the wrong questions.’
Her smile widens. I have got it at last. ‘Yes. Yes,Meda. That is true, I think.’
She pronounces the hypocorism as an epithet, just like the first time she used it, but it is not cruel. It is a compliment. Her eyes glint and spark with that familiar dare and challenge.Her hair spills into the grass. I cannot resist and I do not want to. I tangle a hand in it. I try to do it idly, I worry about spooking her, but she does not react. Each brush against her is burned on my skin, branded in memory, but this is newly intentional. I trace my fingers through the dark waves. She becomes pliant beneath my touch. I am alive with the power of it and of this place. My hand climbs higher with my heartbeat but I remain torturously restrained. I sweep each black billowing sheet away from her face. My fingertips draw the shape of her brow, her collarbones, the lines of her shoulders. My palm gently cups her neck and when my thumb comes to brush her jaw, I feel something hot grip my lower belly. She shudders. She closes her eyes.
10
Aethiopia
My mother is initially suspicious of my long afternoon absence. She summons Ceto and me to question us. I do not tell the whole truth and perhaps she would not believe me if I did. I paid closer attention on the journey back and noted the swift, deadly rapids, the multitude of predators, not to mention the surreal distance, which warped and shifted around us. My mother would not believe me capable of such a journey. She would worry or, worse, she would suspect that I am stronger and more ungovernable than she has thus far believed and tighten her reins. She would give me the world, but the world would not be mine to wield. I am to be adored, petted, protected. But not empowered, not full of my own strength and potential.I wear hubris so you don’t have to.
‘We swam a little way upstream, Mama. I wished for persea and heard there were some a few miles south.’
