Page 7 of Mestra

“A piece.” My head felt like it was floating away.

“Yes.” He held up the knife, its edge shining. “To bring his power into me. Pull up your sleeve. I think somewhere below the shoulder will be best.”

“As myself?”

He frowned. “Who else should you be?”

Oak, I thought. Or the fisherman. Or anyone else who could bear this better than I could. But then I would be letting them be carved. I pulled up my sleeve. My flesh was thin, but there was something just above my elbow. I felt as if I were watching from a long way away, as if I was my falcon again, hanging in thin air. He put the edge of his knife to my arm, and drew it swiftly across. The line of blood leapt and began to spill hot over me. My eyes watered, and I bit down on the bunched fabric of my dress. He made another quick cut, and lifted a flat chunk of flesh the size of a poplar leaf. He carried the flesh to the brazier and delicately worked it onto a skewer’s end. It felt as if he had flayed my whole arm, and my foot was wet where the blood fell. I did not want to look at the wound, but I could see it out of the corner of my eye. A red gash that welled and welled. I should press something to it, I thought. The pain was beating with my heart. But this was the end, I reminded myself. It was the end of pain. After this, my father would no longer suffer. We would be happy again.

The smell of roasting meat filled the room. He turned the skewer and inhaled. “See,” he said. “Ambrosia.” He lifted the dark clot from the flames, blowing on it. With his thumb and finger, he placed it in his mouth. His eyes closed, and he chewed. I saw the great muscles in his jaw working, stark against his skin. He swallowed.

When his eyes opened there was joy in them. “I could taste the god’s power. Now I will be free. Watch.” He held out his hand. “There!” he cried. “Look, did you see it? The curse lifted. Mestra!”

I swayed on my feet. The smoke and the heat pressed in on me. I felt dizzy, like I was changing, but the change did not come.

“It only lasted a moment though. I must not have taken a large enough piece. We need another.”

I heard my own weak whine. “I thought it was only one.”

“Only one more.” His voice was impatient. He lifted the knife. “Daughter, let us finish this. I thought you wanted to help. This is your chance.”

This is your chance.

He had always been good at getting people to give him things. It was how he’d made his fortune in the first place, piece by piece, one more by one more. He had not needed all the goddess’s trees for his feasting hall, but he’d chopped them down anyway. I remembered his face, triumphant, when he came home. It was the same look he wore now, but without the soft flesh that used to cover it.

All the times I had starved for him, all the times I had scavenged and stolen and fretted, all the times I let myself be sold and pawed. Yet here he was, his mouth still open. Before the curse we’d been happy, that’s what I’d always told myself. He’d let me ride with him in his gilded chariot. He used to wink at me across the room, while his advisors twittered. I thought of him smiling at me, after I’d won his bets for him. Such scraps had kept me chewing for years. But I was no child to him, only the closest piece of meat.

I wanted to laugh, suddenly, at how foolish it all was. This wreck of a palace. His skinny shins, and jutting skull, gobbling and gobbling. How he’d tried to scare me with those threadbare myths, the fates of Proteus and Thetis and Metis, who had been deposed and ravished and swallowed. As if those things had not already happened to me. And I was the biggest fool of all. I had a gift that gods would envy, and yet I still stood here, wondering if I should let him keep trying to cut it out of me.

I did laugh then, out loud.

“What’s wrong with you?” His hand snapped shut on my wrist. “Hold still.” He lifted the knife, and the fisherman came. My father let go as if I had scorched him.

“Turn back at once. Change.”

“Why? Does he make it harder for you?”

“Mestra! Change!”

So I changed. Oak’s great hoof kicked out and the table flew and broke against the wall. I bucked, trampling the chair. He fled behind the brazier and I stamped at him, grinding my yellow teeth. Then I galloped down the hall and into the darkness.

I almost did not recognize my cousin. Arete was two years taller and her whole shape was different, though her nose was still snub. I felt an odd shock move through me when she stood. I had expected to see the girl I’d been so often. But of course she had grown since then.

She threw her arms around me, heavy and warm. She touched a finger to the place above my elbow where it was shiny pink and sunken. The flesh had come back on me everywhere but there.

“You heard about your father,” she said.

I’d heard. I’d been walking the coast roads, hiring on the boats. I knew nothing about nets or tides, but I looked as if I did. A man had called out the news: Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, was dead. The city lords had found him in his feasting hall, the flesh of both his arms chewed off to the shoulder, and parts of his legs as well. The man telling the tale made big eyes. “They thought it was an animal, but they found some of his own fingers in his mouth. Can you believe it? He ate himself to death.”

“Wasn’t there a daughter?” I’d said.

“If there was, she’s gone.”

Another sailor had spoken up. “I heard she fled and is marrying a son of Hermes.”

No, said a third. “She was pregnant by Poseidon, and her son will be king.”

“Well,” said a fourth, “some merchant from Kos has been screaming he bought her, and she turned out to be a man.” We’d all had a good laugh at that.