Alcestis (17 page)

Her mouth would flare me into fire like Semele, crisp me to ash. Even her fingers had burned me. Had Admetus felt this, the conflagration secret in his heart? I had blamed him when I saw the gentle kisses, smelled the lingering sun. I should have recognized the char of desire gone to coal, glowing still after Apollo left. But I’d never known this feeling before.

The forest crouched dark before me. I stumbled toward it blindly, thinking it better to find some place to hide than to stand there just beyond the walls of the palace while they were—

I couldn’t think of it, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking of it. My mind stuttered and stuck. Any thought or image was converted to one: Persephone with her head flung back and her mouth open. If I had tried to speak, I would’ve said her name.
Persephone
, I thought;
Alcestis.

But I didn’t try to speak. I didn’t want to speak. I touched my fingers to my own mouth and it felt faintly raw. It
felt
. I snatched my fingers away as if my lips would scorch them. What had she done to me?

I walked into the woods. The low branches did not curve over my head as they had the queen’s; they slapped at my face and arms, and I was too distracted to catch them. There were other shades among the trees, lumbering or darting between the trunks, and I shrank away from them. I felt as though a great hole had opened at my center, a tremor-shaken pit, Tartarus blooming in my belly. How had I not known the gods for what they were? Artemis and her vipers had not taught me; Apollo’s cursed gift had not opened my closed eyes. I’d thought of them like blessed mortals, capricious and fearsome, demanding but distant. I had never thought of gods in the bedchamber, except to resent Admetus’s disloyalty. I had known nothing of their love.

I had to stop as I thought of this, bracing myself against a tree trunk for a moment, my cheeks gone hot.

She’d claimed that Hades had wronged her, made much of the damage she’d suffered because of his love. I didn’t doubt her stories—I didn’t doubt that she believed them. Had she been mortal I would’ve thought her a liar. But this was her nature, their nature: always wronged and always wanting, every ploy real to them, every seeming untruth genuine. I’d thought of her as a woman, but she was a god.

I had wandered through the forest onto a grassy little plain. My shift was stuck about with pine needles, as if it were real clothing. I brushed at them and sap stuck to my hands. I rubbed my hands together fiercely and my skidding palms heated as if I were alive. I stared at my skin, disbelieving, and touched a sticky finger to my right forearm. I felt the prod of my finger-tip, the catch of the sap lifting the tiny hairs on my skin.

I burst into a run, heading back into the trees. Now I had to push myself to keep running, and I wobbled crazily when I ducked around branches and leapt over stones. I no longer felt weightless. I felt tired and frightened and hot, filled with a sick kind of wonder. When I stopped running, my breath heaved noisily in my chest, and I let out a wheezing moan of distress at the sound of it. I had a living woman’s voice now, and Persephone was responsible for it, and for the blood beating in my wrists and neck, the renewed swell of misery in my breast.

I couldn’t imagine why she had done it. What possible satisfaction could my revival give her? Why restore me to something like life and yet trap me here, mystified by warnings, unable to find my sister, a witness to things I ought never to have seen?

The bank of the Eridanus lay before me, the river into which Phaeton had fallen, the swallower of ambition. The current swirled deep, and I could not think how to cross it. I felt now that water could drown me, that the Phlegethon could burn me, that the beast Cerberus would tear me with his claws if I dared walk near him.

I leaned against a broad-trunked tree, put my hands over my face, and felt something wet slide between my fingers. I took my hands away and looked at them—tasted the salt in the crease between my fingers—and found that I was crying. True tears, real tears, such as I had not cried since Hippothoe’s death. I stood half living amongst the half-dead trees and sobbed into my hands. I could not have said honestly for whom I wept.

13

I DID NOT weep for long. I had always been careful to hide my tears while I lived, and even here, where there was no privacy left, I would keep this to myself.

I went to the edge of the river and bent over to wash my face. My reflection was broken by eddies, my eyes like heated metal and my mouth raw red. I looked like a just-painted temple statue, all my features too sharp and bright. This was how life looked to the dead, garish and distressing.

Along the bank of the Eridanus I went, toward the pale brilliance of Elysium. I’d go to where the shades gathered, to see if Hippothoe was among the crowd of watchers at that transparent wall. I would not wander back toward the palace, and if Persephone came for me I would flee into the forest and evade her as long as I could.

The forest rolled out its gloom around me. I thought I’d seen the glowing wall of Elysium to my left, but when I turned to follow its light, I saw only dim trees. Confused, I stopped, walking in a slow circle to see if I could find that glow again— and noticed that one of the trees to my left looked oddly familiar. Hadn’t I passed it before? I went to the tree, touched its bark, but seen up close it didn’t look so memorable. I had to keep going; I would not find Hippothoe by standing still. I circled the tree again, trailing my fingers around its trunk, and found myself facing the arched wooden gate that marked the entrance to Persephone’s dead garden.

I jolted back against the tree, the cypress branches giving off a thick green scent as I crushed them. I tried to flee, but the gate appeared before me whichever way I faced, until I was whirling and stumbling like a drunk. Finally I stopped, panting again, air burning in my throat. The gate wasn’t in front of me. I peered over my shoulder and saw it twitch in the corner of my eye, ready to leap before me if I tried to flee. I closed my eyes, opened them. The gate had not moved.

“All
right
,” I said, ducked my head, and stepped through into the garden.

The stone path was empty, the trees still, but I thought she must be there, waiting for me. The whole place was full of her. I could feel the hoofbeat pattern of my heart within my chest, fast and uneven. Tiresias had said—what? Something about snakes in the fruit, being on guard, being wary.

I’d passed beyond wariness into a state of nervous, prickling irritation. I went down the path, tapping at the stones before I stepped onto them as if they might give way. Soon I saw that the garden was empty. I should’ve been reassured, but anger shot arrowlike through my chest. She thought I would wait for her like a dog, but I had finished with waiting. I stalked toward the gate.

I walked into the space between the wooden pillars of the gate with a thunk, as if I had walked into a wall. Stunned, I fell back, my hand to my ringing forehead. My fingers skidded on sweat and I felt a weird burst of vindication. I had forgotten how necessary it was to have my body reflect my sentiments, to know that I was not imagining the threats I faced.

“Let me out,” I told the gate, and pushed at the hard air. The gate was silent, and I wished for the animal reactions of the adamantine gate, its strange purrs and murmurs. “Let me out. I want to leave.”

I half feared that the wooden gate would spring out to entrap me, twining branches or roots about my limbs. It didn’t, but it would not permit me to leave either. I ran among the trees in the garden, feeling for another portal, but the invisible wall within the gate extended outside of it too. Every gap between trunks or space between bushes repelled me. Back to the gate I went and pounded on it with my fists, relishing each impact, the way my bones pressed my flesh against the wood. “Let me go, let me go,” I hissed.

“Why, Alcestis?” said Persephone behind me. I hadn’t heard her approach; her tread was soundless on the mossy ground. Or perhaps she hadn’t wished me to hear.

I didn’t turn. I didn’t want her to see my tear-stained face, the mortal shine in my eyes. I didn’t want her to know that she had won. I spoke flatly. “I’m looking for my sister, and I am quite sure she is not in here.”

“You are right, though I do not know why you are so certain of it.”

“You swore to help me if you could, lady. Do you keep her imprisoned somewhere, as you mean to imprison me here?”

“You are not imprisoned, Alcestis. I wanted to speak to you, that is all.”

Now I crossed my arms over my breasts and turned to look at her. “I cannot avoid hearing you. Speak.”

“You are grown bold, girl,” she said mildly. She wore only a shift, plain as my own, and looked perfect and cool, no cloak covering her, no metal at her wrists or throat, no accoutrements of royalty. Virginal as one of her maidens. I don’t know what made me more furious—the memory of her tryst with Hades or the fact that I could see no evidence of it on her now.

“Do not play with me,” I said. “It’s not fair sporting. Play with the lord Hades. He’ll match you, I’m sure.”

“Will he?”

“I saw you, and you saw me. You need not pretend, or forget, or whatever it is you do to put on such an innocent face.” For her face was innocent and her expression injured, her gray eyes round and damp. I wavered. Could I believe the look she wore? Could I ever believe a god again?

“I do not understand you,” she said, nearly in a whisper. There was a strange flavor in her voice, an accent I hadn’t heard before—or had only half heard, listening behind doors to the soft sounds of my husband being kissed by his Olympian lover. She came closer to me, her shift dragging on the ground. The tips of her toes stuck out past the garment’s hem; her feet were bare, the white lines of her toes like finely cut marble. She was shifting her weight from one foot to the other, nervous as a bride. Nervous!

“I do not understand you,” I said. “But I know enough now to be cautious.”

“You do not seem cautious to me. You are bold and brave.”

“I am a daughter of Pelias. I am of his line.”

“You are no part of a line, Alcestis. You are yourself alone and you have always been alone. That is what captures me.”

Again she stepped closer and put one hand on my arm. Her lips were red, bitten looking, and when she looked down at her hand on my skin, her eyelashes lay golden as wheat against the plane of her cheek. I took a quick breath and the air cut sharply through my nostrils. “Let me out,” I said, pulling away.

“That I shall not until you sit and listen to me.”

“I don’t want to sit. I want to go.”

“Alcestis,” she said, something curling beneath her voice. “You will sit. I do not ask much. Sit.” And she pointed to the spot beneath the same tree, the curving ground where she had sat and eaten the pomegranate, where I knew the grass was soft and dead.

I sat, pulling my knees to my chest. She stood looking down at me for a long moment, that crease forming between her fine brows, her mouth tight.

“I saw you,” she said, sounding worried. “Though I hardly knew you. I hardly know you now.”

“I am changed.”

“Yes.” She looked at the ground. “You seek to know why.”

“Of course I do,” I said. “What did you think? That you could restore me to life in the underworld and receive a smile in thanks? I won’t thank you for this.”

“I did not think anything,” she said, raising her head. Her gray eyes looked brackish. “This restoration, it is not my doing.”

“I do not believe you.”

“Alcestis,” she said, then sighed. “No. It matters not.”

She sat down beside me, less gracefully than I expected. She smelled of lightning and summer storms. I’d imagined sticky sweetness, but this scent was more honest and more terrifying. She bent her legs neatly before her, clasped her hands over her sharp knees. Her movements were oddly decorous; she still seemed nervous, and that made me believe her. I felt myself shift toward her, my legs going liquid and my balance tilting.

“Then you have not done this—to me.”

She shook her head. “I did not. I—do not think I did. I told you, there is a thing about you that makes you different, interests me in you. It is not your eyes, though they are bright, nor your cheeks, though they are red. It is—a thing I cannot tell.”

“Then—why?”

She was silent a moment. “I do not know,” she said, and the words were quiet but wrenched. “You must not ask me.”

“What may I ask then? Not how to find my sister, nor where, nor why I am breathing like a woman does.”

She bent her head. Did she hide a blush beneath that spill of hair? I wanted to pull it back from her fair cheeks and tie it at her neck so she could not hide from me. She had nothing left to hide but the knowledge I wanted.

“You think there is some great meaning to this alteration?” I asked her, my words rushing out. My hands were sweating on my thighs. “You misunderstand me, goddess. If you did not do this, I don’t care why I was restored, or what it means. That will be the choice of the Fates, and I submit to it. But you must tell me where my sister is. You must.”

She raised her face, and her eyes shone.

“Do not call me goddess,” she said. “I am Persephone. You are Alcestis. And I will tell you one thing about your sister.”

I reached for her, and she held up her hand, blinking, the glisten of tears disappearing. The distressed twist of her mouth shifted, the corners of her lips curling up, and a sly light glinted in her eyes.

“In exchange for a story.”

My hand dropped. “You cannot just give a thing, can you? You must demand.”

“I cannot,” she said, almost proudly. “It is not how I am made.”

“But you have heard my—”

“No, you do not see.” She let her legs fall sideways, knees toward me, and put her hand on the dry grass between us. “I do not ask you to tell me your story. I ask you to listen.”

I fell back onto my palms. I could feel now how prickly the grass was. “I don’t—”

“There is a story I have not told you, Alcestis,” she whispered, leaning in so close that I could feel her breath flutter hot-cold upon my open lips. “Alcestis.” Her lips moved the same way they had with Hades beneath her and her eyes on mine. She bent and kissed my knee, and I felt her mouth steaming through the fabric of my shift. I blushed, my face a sheet of flame, my chest burning. I was all heat. She put her hand on my shoulder and the touch of her warm palm seared me.

“What story? What do you mean?”

“The story of my marriage,” she said, her thumb skimming my collarbone. “Of my wedding. The story no one knows, for the bards do not sing it and the painters do not smear it on their walls. It is not fit for such audiences. But it is fit for you, Alcestis.”

She sprang toward me like a lion might, uncoiling in a burst. She knocked the air from me—I was still unused to breathing— and left me gasping. She pushed me onto my back and knelt over me as she had knelt over Hades, her skirt sliding up her bare white legs. Her thighs were hot around mine. I had my hands in the grass, my fingers pressing down toward its brown roots, and she picked up my right hand slowly, and curved it onto the flesh above her knee, just as Admetus had done a year ago. A life ago. I gasped. She bent down in a flash, faster than a mortal could, and pressed her soft mouth to mine.

Her kiss was like the first bite of fruit gone bitter—long wanted and terrible when possessed. I struggled under her hands, and she released me, our mouths slipping wetly as we parted. She murmured my name again, her lips soft on my cheek, the line of my jaw.

“This is how I was kissed when he wed me,” she whispered. “Do you know what it is like, to be kissed this way when you are a virgin girl? It is worse than Elysium.”

I thought Admetus had kissed me like this once, but I couldn’t remember. Her fingers were warm and clever at the hem of my shift, twitching it upward.

“I do not think you know—what it is like for mortals—”

“I know,” she said, her lips against my neck, kissing me until I went soft beneath her. “You keep your lightning within.”

My stomach went cold. I tried to sit up, but she had pinned my hips to the ground, and when I tried to shove at her shoulders, she grabbed my hands hard.

“I am telling this story,” she said, and pushed my wrists into the grass. When she lifted her hands away I couldn’t move my arms; no roots seized me, but I was trapped. She did not need to command plants to capture me. She’d caught me by herself.

“What are you doing?” My voice came high pitched, a virgin girl’s squeak of a plea. I struggled again but couldn’t get free.

“Listen,” she said, and pulled my shift up my body. Her gaze fell on my bare thighs, and I went feverish all over again, helpless and horrified, slick with want. “That is all I ask. It is a long story, but a sweet one in the end, and a bitter one too. You will like it.”

“I don’t care! I don’t want to know your story,” I cried. “Let me go, Persephone.”

She sat back a little, startled, though her hands still clamped my wrists. “You do not want to know of my wedding? Truly?”

“Truly,” I said, shaking beneath her. I should’ve stopped speaking then, but I could not. “I hate thinking of him wedding you. I hate to think of him having you. And to see it—” She’d broken into a canted smile, her eyelids low. The sight of it infuriated me and I writhed in her grasp, miserable and hot and alive in the dead garden.

“Oh, but again you do not see,” she whispered, leaning in, pushing the whole hot length of her body against me. So like a woman she was, and so like me—both of us narrow and slim, our breasts soft and small, pressed together now. Her throat had gone scarlet, her cheeks flushed, her eyes storm green in contrast. I felt her heart striking against my chest like oncoming thunder. “He does not have me. He shall never have me, and that is why I may have him when I need him.”

I gave in with an angry sigh. “And do you need me too?”

“How can you ask?” she whispered, and bent down again to kiss me. Her knees slid between mine, and her hands ran along my sides, sweeping, smoothing my shift across my ribs and over my belly. “You are for me. It is destined.”

“That tells me nothing,” I spat, broken words in a breaking voice. “You’ve told me nothing. How do—oh—how do I know I can trust you to tell me of Hippothoe after this?”