Page 90 of The Hymn to Dionysus

“He is a maltreated and neglected child who ran away.”

“Maltreated and neglec—he’s Sown!” My voice was doing its breaking-too-high trick again. “His function isn’t to do what he likes, it’s to do his fucking duty.”

Dionysus was breathing in slowly, and I recognised the way he looked, because it was exactly the way Helios had looked when he realized he was going to have to fight someone a lot bigger and stronger than him, but he would do it anyway, because he would die of shame to retreat. It put me on edge. I didn’t want to fight. I already hated arguing even this much. If he tried, though, he was going to crush me.

“His duty was hurting him, and this is the medicine, and the only reason you think that’s unreasonable is that your duty has hurt you much more, there never was medicine for you, and you don’t see why other people shouldn’t be hurt the same way.”

I wished he had hit me. It would have hurt less than hearing what he thought I was like, and how embittered and terrible. “No,” I ground out, “the reason I think he should do his duty is that it is necessary. I don’t want to make anyone suffer, I don’t take some foul joy in it—”

“That isn’t what I said—”

“Yes it is. You can think what you want about me, you can think I’m some vengeful cruel monster, but I took a vow. Duty is honour. My duty is to return him to the Queen, so that he can do his.”

He was shaking his head. “And I took vows to do what was best for the patient, not for someone else.”

“So it’s fine to just let him go on the odd murderous rampage?” I demanded. “The triplets’ lives don’t matter? He’s dangerous like this, and he is required as he was. How can you possibly think that it’s better to just leave him be?”

“For the same reason,” he said, and this time there was a flint edge in his voice, “that I didn’t chain you to a wall when you thought you were killing things.” He picked up a pomegranate and held it out, close to me. It turned to dust in his hand. “Because it wouldn’t help you. Only me.”

It wasn’t what he was saying, exactly, that grated so badly. It was the way he was saying it. It was that—absurdly—he had wasted a pomegranate, and that that little trick was clearly meant to show I could have been dust by now if he had wanted. It was patronising, and it was hammering a nail with a sledgehammer, and worst of all, it scared me in a sharp immediate way I hadn’t been scared since I was little and staring at certain death under the hooves of a Hatti charger. My whole body only knew one thing to do when I was scared like that, because anything else, all my life, would have meant going down under that charger.

I punched him so hard he collapsed in front of me, and instantly, I realized it was too hard. He didn’t move, and nor did I. I had to just stand there, staring at the window, because if I looked at him, it would be real. A child-part of me was convinced that if I didn’t look, he would get up.

He didn’t get up.

I sank down on my knees and pressed my temple against his chest, trying to find his heartbeat. Nothing. No thump; no lift of his ribs.

Reasoning insanely that it wasn’t too late, I could find another witch in town who might still be able to help him, I lifted him up. Dead weight is so much heavier than you ever think it could be. Carrying a dead person is like trying to carrying the same weight in sand. I knew what that felt like and it felt like that now, but I had to be wrong, because I couldn’t have just murdered the last of my family for no reason except that he had argued with me, I couldn’t be that.

I reached halfway down the olive grove before I had to buckle onto the grass, the newly lush grass, under the newly beautiful lemon tree.

As soon as he touched the grass, it died. It withered, like it was burning, shrivelling up, rippling out from us, to the bases of the trees, where, even by the moonlight, I could see that the olives were dying too, the lemons, the leaves desiccating half to dust.

He breathed in.

I started to cry. It was shock and relief and horror and fear all at once.

Dionysus punched my arm. “Fuckwit! Look at the fucking trees!”

I couldn’t speak.

He sighed. “It’s all right. Don’t . . . we should be able to save the trees.”

“The trees?” I yelled at him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I . . .”

He took my hand and held it in both of his against his chest. “No, I’m sorry. I made you do that.”

“You didn’t make me.”

He made a soft impatient sound. “I did.” He sighed. “I wanted to remind you it isn’t a choice.”

“I killed you.”

“Briefly.”

I touched his chest to feel his heart. Yes; going again. He was warm. I didn’t ask how. I could see how. The trees were dead instead of him, the grass, the vines. I didn’t know what to say. I had a stone in my throat. Distantly, I could feel I was still crying, my breath coming in shudders.

Dionysus put his hands through my hair to make me look up.