Page 58 of The Hymn to Dionysus

At the top was a little gantry. We stepped off the rope, and then there was the moon, and the ruin, and the impossible plants; ivy and grapes and jasmine and olives and flowers, as lush as they would have been in the greenest spring—they were so strong it was eerie, and all of it was silent. I couldn’t hear my own breathing. Dionysus led me across to a low flat wall by a water channel and pushed my shoulder until I sat. Some of his glass lamps sparkled there. I’d been right, I was covered in honey. I wanted to get clean, but without being able to hear my own voice from the inside, it was impossible to talk. I could tell the sounds would be wrong.

He touched my shoulder to make me look at him. He had brought his basket of honeycomb too, and now it was gleaming gold beside him. A little madly, I wondered what the bees had told him. He gave me a cup. It wasn’t water but deep, black wine that swam with stars from the lamps. I shook my head.

He put my hands around it. “Medicine,” he said, clearly, so I could see it.

I could smell that there was alcohol in it, but I sipped it anyway.

It was wine, or at least, mostly wine: but it wasn’t like anything I’d ever tasted before. It was sweet but sharp, and I could taste spice and fruit in it, and it was strong enough that it swept right through me straightaway, but there was something else as well. Everything went still, and slow. All the sharp edges of the world softened. Far from feeling drunk, I felt more like myself, like my normal thinking was coming back after that vision down in the cave, and with a new clarity, I understood why he had been collecting honey. This was honey-wine. I hinged forward over my own knees. I’d thought I knew what relief was—coming off a ten-hour night watch, not being wet any more after a screaming storm by the Cyclades—but this was something else.

Dionysus leaned to catch my eye, the ends of his hair coiling over the ivy on the wall. “You’re safe.”

I heard it somewhere deeper than normal hearing. Some part of me that I hadn’t known was curled up tight, backed into a corner, spear out, straightened up and looked around and said, Yes, you’re right. That’s all right then. And relaxed.

I could hear.

No.

I could hear better than before.

I could hear an owl a long way away, and something rustling in the forest, and the tiny shush of the wind in the trees. The water was giggling.

Whatever invisible box I’d been in since Troy, he had taken me out of it.

“Can you hear me?” he asked.

I hadn’t realized that I was lip-reading as much as I was hearing. He sounded different—richer, clearer, like the low hum of a lyre when no one is playing it, but a cavalry regiment is riding close by, shuddering the strings.

“Yes,” I said, and then twitched, because I could hear myself too. I’d thought I could before, but it had been a lot dimmer than I’d realized. I could hear that I was speaking too quietly. “Would you—say something else?” I asked, to check, not wanting to believe it yet in case it was some kind of joy-hallucination brought on by not being trapped in a cave with millions of bees any more.

“Are you hurt?”

Incredible. I started to laugh, and it sounded weird, because I could hear it in the air as well as though my own skull. And there was a lovely shushing sound around us, one I did know, but I hadn’t heard it for a long time, and it was—of course it was the leaves of the vines and the trees, swaying in the hot wind. It was nothing, but it felt like I’d finally made it home, for all I’d been home all this time. “I can hear the trees,” I said, probably sounding insane. “I couldn’t! I couldn’t before, I lost most of my hearing the day Troy fell, how did you do that?”

He opened his hands, the universal what can I say sign. “Witching.”

“Piss off, witching! There were falling towers, witches can’t fix that—”

“No,” he said. “But do you remember what it was you were doing, when your hearing stopped?”

“Nothing special,” I said, trying to think. “I was sitting on the steps of the throne room at Troy, we’d broken in about an hour earlier. It was lovely. I went through the kitchens and the slaves had just baked these amazing cakes. They were from the Tin Isles, you know, the ugly people with grey hair, but gods, they can bake. It had strawberries in it.”

He kind of laughed, not quite as though anything was funny. “What else?”

“Well . . . some of the little knights were getting a bit overenthusiastic, they’d got the king in the corner, but it was very restrained, for the end of a ten-year siege. I hardly got any splatter. Feral Jason only set him on fire a little bit. Why? Is it important?”

He was giving me a strange glassy stare, the kind that he would have aimed at somebody exclaiming happily about the lovely wildflowers as they skipped closer and closer to a bear that was looking hopeful and getting the good silverware out: it was half dismay and half a dark need to see just how close to the bear I’d get before I noticed. “No,” he said, “not important at all, I was just interested in the ugly slaves and the baking.”

“I don’t know what’s happening any more,” I said, but I didn’t care, because I felt like I might pop. There was an owl in the olive tree behind him, watching us with eyes narrowed against the little lights of the lamps, and running its talons over the bark to clean them. I could hear the scrape, small but clear. I could hear the water laughing in its channel, and the sound my palm, sword-rough, was making against the stone wall, and the miniature shush of his clothes shifting when he moved, and it was all glorious. I’d forgotten there was so much in the world.

From the great fissure in the ground beside us, a voice echoed up. It was eerie, because the words didn’t quite sound like the speaker knew the meaning. They broke in odd places, as if they were just noises that came from somewhere past understanding.

I, I am the lord of the dance,

Duty, oath, and law are sacred

Lies, lie down all your sorrow

Dance with me again.