Alcestis (2 page)

I’d seen my grandfather only once that I remembered, though Pisidice said he’d come to the palace after my birth. He had come too for Acastus’s growth-day ritual. He had been great and fearsome, more fearsome than my father, and he’d left his trident humming in the corner of the great hall all day. Ever since, the stones in that corner had been swollen and crusted with salt; the kitchen slaves would scrape it off sometimes, those who dared to touch it, but it still crept back, glittery white. Mostly I remembered Poseidon’s thick sea-clogged smell, and the way his black hair lay dull and damp against his skull, and the pattern of drips he’d left on the floors, like stories marked out in the stars. I didn’t expect him to appear now— there was a reason the words of the prayer contained no specific invitation—but he might. He always might come, always might be submerged offshore, circled with Nereids, waiting to burst from the surf or to drag down some girl careless enough to edge her toes into the water.

We’d waited long enough. Hippothoe stood and ushered me behind her, then bent for the mallet. She swung it over her head and down: the jar shattered, seawater sprayed our ankles, pieces of clay clattered wetly on stone. Hippothoe’s skirts were soaked. The silence of the courtyard seemed to swell for a moment, as if we’d been swallowed by some invisible wave, and then the noise of slaves and stable boys broke in upon us. The ritual was done.

Our brothers were watching us from the edge of the courtyard, tall Acastus staring, Pelopia darting sideways glances as if embarrassed. I nudged Hippothoe, who was shaking out her wet clothes. “They’re here,” I hissed at her, and she nodded— quick, angry jerks of her head.

“I see them,” she said. “Behave yourself, Alcestis.” It was a fair warning. I was already drifting away from her toward the boys. Acastus was eight years older than I and Pelopia six—my mother, Anaxibia, had produced a child every two years until my birth, first two boys, then two girls, then me, taking a boy’s place.

I saw my brothers at meals and sometimes glimpsed them in the mornings if we got out to the courtyard quickly enough, but I had hardly spoken to them for over three years. Before I turned five I’d been allowed to roam the palace without a sister to escort me; a quiet girl child could move about as freely as a shade. Acastus had been constantly surrounded by a group of young men, boys from the countryside whose fathers had sent them to the palace to earn our father’s favor. They lay about in the courtyard, drinking wine and eating the food the servants brought them and talking of shooting contests or women or animals they’d killed, and rarely noticed me fingering the pommels of their swords and tracing the grommets on their leather armor. When Acastus caught me, he used to swing me into his arms and let me pat at his cheek like a baby, feeling the prick of his golden stubble beneath my hands. Acastus looked like none of Anaxibia’s other children. He was burnished as a god, blond-brown hair falling to his shoulders, and everyone said then that he was the only child of Pelias in whom Poseidon’s blood ran true.

The young men were warriors now. They didn’t spend so much time drinking and I wasn’t allowed among them. I was little heavier at eight than I’d been at five, but if I stood close to Acastus at dinner, he’d cross his hands behind his back and step away from me. He acted more like a king every day.

Pelopia didn’t have Acastus’s serious beauty or godlike carriage; he had a crooked nose and a crooked grin, and his hair stuck out funny all over his head, a mass of half-knotted dark curls. I liked his eyes best, for they were coppery in the right light, like ingots set beneath his lashes. They were our mother’s eyes, the servants told me, murmuring to me in the kitchens or in the women’s quarters late at night when I couldn’t sleep, and mine were the same. I’d look like Anaxibia living if I’d only pay attention to my clothing and stop playing in the dirt whenever the mood struck me. My father, the king, would be ashamed, they said, and it was true. Pelias always looked on me with distrust, even before I did anything to earn it.

I was halfway across the courtyard when Hippothoe caught up with me. “Stop it,” she said. “You know Pelias is near, and he won’t like you bothering them. Come inside and get something to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”

“No,” I said, lying. I took another step away and Hippothoe’s hand curved around my shoulder.

“I’m hungry,” she said. I saw how faint she looked, and how gray. Reluctantly, I let her draw me in against her side and guide me back into the palace. We passed the slaves collecting the broken bits of the jar and the splattered seaweed, leaving the saltwater to dry.

I sulked for the rest of the morning.

We wove on the porch that afternoon, until the sun grew low. Then we climbed the stairs to our bedchamber to wait for the evening meal. Pisidice was already sitting by the window, looking for her imaginary suitors, and when she turned to us her eyes shone like the water in the dead vessel. “Did you do it right?” she asked shortly, and turned away when Hippothoe nodded.

Hippothoe fell gratefully onto the bed and propped herself up against the wall, holding her arms out to me. I fell asleep with my head in her lap. Her skirts smelled of the sea. When I woke later, she was still drowsing, her head dangling forward like a slaughtered calf’s, her lips open and dry. I sat up. I heard Pisidice’s skirts whispering as she moved about the room, and knew I should wake Hippothoe for the meal, but I didn’t want to. I knew what would happen at dinner. Pelias would demand an account of the ritual, but wouldn’t notice Hippothoe’s faintness or pray for her health. We’d rise from the table when he rose and wait in a silent, trembling line for his ritual kisses: Acastus’s fair cheeks, Pelopia’s, Pisidice’s forehead (his hand skimming her braids), Hippothoe’s brow. Then our father would kiss me hard on the crown of my head, never looking at me, while I tried to resemble my mother as much as possible, or as little—and he would leave without speaking to me at all.

THAT SUMMER, JUST before my ninth birthday, was hotter than any summer I could remember. The sun dried the land until dust swirled around the palace and strong, salty winds came in from the sea. The slaves hung cloth over the windows, but the dust crept in, reddening our eyes and making each bite of food crunch with grit. My sisters and I sweated terribly in our bed, jamming sticky elbows into sticky ribs.

It had been three weeks since Hippothoe and I had asked Poseidon’s blessing, and miserable as the weather made us, the sailing had been calm and profitable. Pelias was in excellent spirits, and summer always made him social. He gave great feasts in the palace, gatherings raucous with wine and shouting and the giggles of local women brought in for entertainment.

On this night he was holding such a feast. The wind gods swept the noise under the cloth hanging in our window and into the bed. Our father’s voice was inescapable as a god’s, the deep roar of his laugh like a lion’s. I lay drowsing with my head on Hippothoe’s arm and the sound of Pelias’s laugh followed me into sleep.

I dreamed of a creature with a fierce growl and a sad, blank-eyed face, a beast with such a lonely look that I chased after it, trying to pet its mangy ruff. But I could not reach it, and as I ran toward the creature, it spun on me with bared teeth and flashing claws and finally I stopped and let it escape. It called forlornly as it faded into the distance. I thought it cried in the Achaean tongue, but I could not understand it, and I woke teary, half trussed in my shift, afraid.

My head was on the mattress and the cloth beneath my cheek felt damp. I could still hear the growling call of my dream creature. I hitched myself up on my elbows and saw Hippothoe clammy and blue lipped beside me. She barked a cough like a warning growl and convulsed around it with a sound like wet cloth tearing—and then another cough, another, until it all seemed to be one spasm with no breaks to gasp for air.

I scrambled out of the bed and ran into the outer room, screaming for the servants. They came out of the beds so slowly, lumbering like beasts. I had my hands out for the head maid, grabbing for her, pulling her along behind me. She struggled free of my grip. She was saying something about calling the men, but I didn’t stop to listen. I ran back to my sister.

In the bedchamber, Pisidice had awakened and was cradling Hippothoe on her lap, tilting Hippothoe’s head back over her thigh. The terrible cough had slowed to a hideous dragging noise and Hippothoe’s eyes were closed. I pressed up beside them on the bed, put a hand on Hippothoe’s chest; I felt my sister’s ribs beneath the damp nightdress and something making a thick rattle inside them. I jerked my hand back and stared up at Pisidice, whose face was gray and set.

“Are the others coming?” Pisidice asked me. Hippothoe jerked and moaned in her arms. “They’ll have to carry her. Are the men coming? Did you call them?”

“I called,” I said thickly. “Is it a curse?”

“Shut your mouth,” Pisidice said. “She’s ill—it’s not a curse. Apollo will heal her.”

For the first time that thought did not instantly soothe me. Hippothoe’s hair was slicked to her skull with sweat. I smoothed strands away from her eyes, over her fine, hot skin. I couldn’t seem to swallow properly, as if her struggle for breath had spread to my own body. “We’ll take her to the kitchens,” I said. “Once the men get here.”

In the outer room there was a commotion, high-pitched chatter and lower voices answering. The head maid rushed into the bedchamber, her shift open at the neck and her heavy breasts swinging beneath it. She bent over Hippothoe, put a hand on my sister’s forehead, then felt her fluttering throat and heaving chest. “How long has she been this way?” she demanded, looking at Pisidice.

“Not long,” I said. “I just woke. I didn’t hear her right away, it was so loud downstairs. I was asleep.” I couldn’t seem to stop talking.

A distracted nod. The room had filled with people, slaves bearing torches and rubbing at their tired eyes. The mass of their bodies muffled Hippothoe’s rattling wheeze. My eyes slipped from one face to another, eyes and mouths and noses I knew, all a blur. Maids and slaves and stable boys, and none of them were doing anything to help Hippothoe.

“Take her,” I cried. “You must take her to the hearth, she has to breathe.”

There was a long, still moment. Then the head maid stepped back and wiped her hands on her shift. “Fetch the king,” she told one of the servants. “Take a guard with you. You, take her to the great hall. We’ll need the royal hearth. The rest of you, call on the lord Apollo at once. Carefully, there!”

The chant began slowly around us, the same words the head maid and I always said.
O, Apollo, golden healer—

A slave pulled Hippothoe off Pisidice’s lap, away from my clutching hands. Hippothoe’s mouth hung open and I wished I could reach down her throat to pull out whatever was blocking her breath. Her lips had paled, and when the slave slung her into his arms she gasped and her eyelids fluttered. I grabbed at her wrist.

“Wake up,” I called. “Hippothoe, you have to wake up.”

The head maid pried my fingers away. “Let go, child,” she said softly. “You can follow them down right after. Best you pray to the god your uncle.”

I stared at the woman, uncomprehending. The slave carried Hippothoe out of the room.

“Come on,” Pisidice hissed, seizing my wrist and yanking me off the bed. I landed hard on my heels and let her pull me into a run. We raced through the women’s quarters toward the stairs, the slave ahead of us, Hippothoe’s feet dangling over his arm as he walked. He went past the kitchens, past the drinking room, heading for the great hall as the maid had instructed.

“He’s not going to the kitchens,” I said, panting and desperate. “He’s taking her to the royal hearth. Why is he doing that? Pisidice? Are you praying?”

Pisidice didn’t answer.

“He has to take her there, like the other times! Boil the water, and—and the garlic—”

Pisidice spun to face me, grabbing at my shoulders hard and pushing me back against the wall. The rest of the servants passed us by in a rush, faces carefully averted as they chanted. I turned my head to watch them, and Pisidice shook me until my teeth clashed together. I smothered a cry. “This is not like the other times,” Pisidice said, her fingers biting into my skin. She bent close. Her hair had come loose from its braid and it swayed in a mass over her shoulders. “It won’t work. It won’t fix her.”

I stilled, staring into her stony eyes. “Why not?”

“Because it’s her time to die,” Pisidice said, “like it was Mother’s time, when you came, and so they couldn’t save her then either. Her thread’s been cut, Alcestis. The water won’t help.”

“How do you know?” I pushed Pisidice away. “Only the gods know when she’ll die. You’re not a god, you don’t know!”

“I know,” Pisidice said. Each word had a hard punch to it, and I flinched away from her. Pisidice shook her head and reached out. “She’s dying. Come on.”

We ran again, shoving through the people clustered in the doorway to the great hall. I shook off Pisidice’s hand and pushed up close to Hippothoe, hoping to see my sister’s chest lift and fall, to see red in her cheeks, to feel her grasp my fingers. My hand fell on Hippothoe’s shoulder: her skin warmed my hand, but she did not move. Her face was lax, her eyelids low. She looked like one in a dream. I thought: so the attack has ended; she’s fallen asleep. But I leaned in, and I saw that her chest was not rising—there was no cough, no rough wheeze, no breath— but I could not believe it. I bent down and laid my head against her still chest. The world was hushed, the slaves had gone quiet around us, but hard as I listened, I could not hear the rattle of her breath. I would never hear it again.