Page 59 of This Divine Revelry

Myrto scribbles so hurriedly on her tablet she scratches the wood beneath the wax.

‘One of your curses, I believe,’ Hermes says.

Dionysus narrows his eyes. ‘Hilarious.’

‘This doesn’t feel like much of a curse,’ I say, looking to my own fingers like I might see them glowing.

‘Just wait,’ Dionysus says darkly.

I see what he means a moment later, when I brush the rope tie of my own chiton and the fabric heats and hardens under my touch.

‘Very well, I understand the curse,’ I say. I can breathe, just about, but I keep my hands out before me, scared of touching the whole dress and encasing myself in a golden statue I can’t escape from. ‘Can you remove the curse, please? Clearly I’m not immune to this one.’

‘Wait.’ Dionysus leaps up. ‘Let me get my pine cones.’

I swear after him, but he’s already running.

I adjust the golden belt as Dionysus, finally seeing the benefits of our experiments, leans against a mast, twirling his newly golden pine cone staff that he’s elected to call a thyrsus.

It doesn’t look quite so ridiculous now it is solid gold.

When he starts cackling, I narrow my eyes at Hermes, who casts his gaze to the sky to keep from laughing too. Myrto snorts as she makes what is clearly a big cross on the tablet.

‘What?’ I demand, sniffing. No, not sniffing – twitching. My nose shudders and, slightly wary of turning myself to gold, I bring my hand up to find a smooth, flat button where my nose was.

I run to the golden staff, angling it until a tooth of a pine cone is flat enough for a reflection.

Dionysus is too busy laughing to stop me.

‘Do I have a rabbit nose?’

‘A hare, actually,’ Hermes corrects. ‘I thought I’d do ears of a donkey but that’s sort of Dionysus’s thing.’

‘Alright, change it back. I’m clearly not immune to this one either.’

Dionysus starts laughing again. ‘Your nose twitches when you speak.’

‘Hermes!’ I whirl on the other god.

He, at least, lazily waves his hand and I feel my nose sharpen into its usual upturned point.

‘Clearly this isn’t working,’ I say, beginning to pace. Ahead, maenads and satyrs mill around the back of the boat, watching without trying to appear like they are watching, and I really did not need an audience for my repeated failures. ‘Maybe I did something inadvertently when Hera cursed me.’

I try to cast my mind back, remembering only the terror. Could it be that? Something to do with adrenaline racing through my veins, waking dormant powers? Or the way I’d clutched that aulos, desperately calling for help. Was it my own fierce commitment to survival that allowed me to circumvent the curse?

I tell myself that it will work this time. That I refuse to fail before all these people. That whatever lies within me will prove itself.

‘Try it now,’ I say, closing my eyes to focus just as I catch Hermes’s wriggling fingers.

I open my eyes. Did I stop it?

Hermes regards me curiously. ‘How do you feel, Ariadne?’

Fine. ‘Feel, Ariadne.’

That hadn’t been what I meant to say, and I go to tell them as much but when I open my mouth no sound comes out.

Dionysus glowers at Hermes as though these curses aren’t precisely the point. ‘Echo, really?’