‘Phineus.’
‘Why are we here?’ he asks and his voice comes as if from a distance or underwater.
‘There will be a course correction.’
I say the words and they are not my own – they open something in the air around us. There was no moon but suddenly there is light and in the light are two figures. They appear to be women, but I know they are gods. I know them and I know they have come for me. The taller of the two is so radiant in her loveliness that my life being so dictated by my face seems foolish. I cannot hold her image in my mind because she is beyond an image. Sheisbeauty. Her presence explains its meaning. Beauty did not exist before her and it cannot exist after, only pale, sad imitations. To look upon her, I am hit by this bolt of truth, is to look upon no one thing. It is to see stars densely populating a clear skyand the winding, sparkling Nile bordered by rolling green, becoming brilliant gold. It is to see the face of my mother, whispering to me as I sleep in her arms. It is Ceto, flushed and twisted beneath me, it is the Cetus, sleek and black and crowned as a queen, it is Ceto’s light smile, it is Ceto’s depthless eyes, it is Ceto, now, lying peacefully asleep. I feel Aphrodite’s cool interest more than I see it, as though the intensity of her light is focused on me. I am distantly horrified, the loathsome mix of fear and shame that accompanies the realizing of an inevitability. I sought to avoid her notice but of course I could not. I have been foolish and complacent.
Her sister is small and cold at her side, but I have made this mistake before.
Artemis says, ‘I have done all I can.’
If I was wholly myself, I would thank her for it. I would lie and pretend and survive.
But my womanish tricks will not work here on those who invented them.
‘It is not enough.’
‘You have been given plenty,’ Aphrodite intones, coldly disdainful.
‘I did not ask for it.’
‘You have been given beauty and beauty is power.’
‘You do not understand.’ I want to make her listen; she will not but I will not get this chance again. ‘You do not experience as we do. The power is not mine to wield. Women do not wield in this world of men.’
‘You have disrespected me. You have attempted to cast my gift aside. You are ungrateful.’
‘It was not to me you gave it!’ I am caught betweendesperation and rage and yet able to fully embody neither. ‘I cannot look upon my own face. I take no pleasure in it. All it ever did was make me visible and to be visible as a mortal woman is to be always in danger.’
I feel Aphrodite’s scorn as a torrid, wilting heat.
‘You are wanted as a ruler.’ Artemis speaks as though she is used to soothing, to being the smiling face that delivers agonies.
‘I did not ask for it.’
Aphrodite says, ‘It was your parents’ wish, your mother’s. And what are children but the prayers of their parents?’ Her ire has abated as swiftly as it appeared, fickle and easily tired, and now she observes me with a detached curiosity, the way I have found shapes in clouds. ‘Your life is short, your legacy is longer. Your sons will be kings and their sons will be kings.’
‘Am I to be enslaved by my descendants? Forever indebted to those who will come after me, who will live in a world I do not see?’
‘The debt will be theirs, not yours. They will thank you and praise your name.’
‘What will I care for thanks and praise when I am gone?’
‘You will be immortal.’
Not even the temptation of an eternity with Ceto can eclipse the intemperate, eroding crash of the sea.
‘There are ways one can die and still live.’
Their silence is confirmation.
‘You know what you condemn me to. You know even better than I do.’ I meet Artemis’ gaze unflinchingly. Her divinity does not flay me as Aphrodite’s does and I wonder if this is a mercy on her part.
‘I am not inevitable,’ she murmurs. ‘I live in the forestswith bears and wild things. I have loved you as a wild thing. But you are not mine to keep.’ Because I am Poseidon’s. And she has been outrunning men on her quick feet since the beginning of the beginning. She cannot slow for me.
A movement at my side reminds me that Phineus is here. He has been watching our exchange, alert but quiet, attentive. ‘Why is he here?’
‘There must be balance in all things. You have created an asymmetry and now there are too many options. We must remove one.’ Aphrodite speaks so I do not notice the bow in Artemis’ hands. When I do my brain is slow and my body is slower. The arrow is gold, not silver. I dimly wonder, as she draws and fires, why she borrowed one of her brother’s arrows, when she has so many of her own. Phineus crumples. I do not cry out.
