Snakehead (21 page)

Andromeda caught a mouthful of seawater. She choked and coughed, clutching her precious oar. The veil of spume parted. For a moment she saw, in moonlight, what lay beyond the reefs. The cliffs, black and gleaming, rising straight from the white shock of the waves. She looked back, over her shoulder. Perseus was staring at her, his mouth an
O
of horror, his eyes blind with visions. “The eye!” he croaked. “The eye!”

Stand by me, she thought, and deliberately plunged her oar.

The eye

And again,

The eye

And again,

The eye

One more stroke. The clawing fingers of that black maw caught the dinghy, and flung it inward. Andromeda’s oar was ripped out of her hands. She threw herself onto the bottom boards, grabbed hold of Perseus; and the whirlpool swallowed them.

* * *

Serifos was untouched by the storm that had swooped on the Ionian Coast, six hundred long miles away by the sea roads. Danae could not hear the wind that gave Jason cause to toss his passengers overboard. She was kept awake by anxieties closer to home. Hard to believe the children had been gone such a short while … She stood in the kitchen yard with the people who’d taken shelter at Dicty’s, a pitchfork in her hands—hoping there’d be no more trouble tonight, and thinking of the white linen embroidered with cornflowers and wheat ears, inscribed
The Queen of Summer
. The story of the Summer Queen tells how the child of the Goddess of Harvest, Dimitra, was kidnapped by Winter, the king of the dead. But the blossoming girl was found again; she came back to her mother. Spring always returns….

Did they tell that story in Haifa? Danae had never had a chance to ask Andromeda. Probably they did, because it was as old and true as the “Dark Water” song. It belonged to no nation, although Danae had learned it with the Achaean names, in the Greek language, when she was a child.

You gave me yourself, Kore. You promised to return
.

She did not pray to Zeus. She would never
pray
to Perseus’s father. She prayed to his wife, to Hera the Protectoress. Anthe thought the Achaean Goddess was nothing but a vindictive shrew, but Danae knew better. Maybe she bargained, maybe she just pleaded.
You know I never harmed you willingly, great lady. Be just. Have pity on my children, my dear boy and my dear girl. Let them live
.

I
lost the otherworld horror of the Gray Sisters. I was back with Andromeda, and the whirlpool had us. “Hang on,” I screamed, and she clung to me while I struggled to keep my arms and legs thrust against the sides. There was a weight on my back, dragging me outward, terrifyingly strong. If I let go, or if one flimsy plank burst, we were dead, instantly dead. We were thrown around like a child’s toy boat in a yelling black downspout, flung from rock to rock, around and around, falling, falling….

Then the dinghy was right side up again; the tumult faded and I was breathing air. That’s all I knew, until I felt the bottom of the boat bumping against something, gently, gently. There was a grating sound, familiar but uncanny. We separated, and got to our knees. The darkness seemed complete, but I had a feeling of great space above us, around us. I groped over the bow. “Pebbles,” I
reported, hardly able to believe it. Our boat was being nudged by quiet waves onto a gravel shore.

We climbed out and I pulled the boat farther up: instinct for an islander. Then I grabbed Andromeda again, or she grabbed me. We wrapped ourselves around each other: icy bodies, saltwater kisses setting me on fire, the first we’d ever shared.

“D’you think we’re dead?” I whispered.

Being dead did not seem too bad, at that moment.

“No,” said Andromeda, her nose against the hollow of my throat. “We’re not dead. I know that for sure, because we’re still together, son of Zeus.”

That cooled me off. I let her go, but I kept a tight hold on her hand. We sat on the pebbles. “I met the Graeae,” I said. “I got the tooth all right, but I didn’t fool them for long. I had to take the eye … to take the eye, and run for it.”

“That’s what you said.
Take the eye
. I thought you were telling me to steer into the whirlpool, so I did. As far as I could steer at all. I had to believe you, because we were going to be smashed to death. We must be under the cliffs now.”

“What cliffs?”

(In a flash, in my mind’s eye, I saw the spume parting, the black wall …)

“There were cliffs beyond the reef, no break in them…. The whirlpool must have swept us into a cave. Perseus, how are we going to get out?”

The blackness had turned to charcoal. I could see
shards of light, far away and far above us, but I couldn’t see much of the cavern itself, only that it seemed huge. There was no sound of the sea, no sign of the roaring funnel we’d fallen through. At our feet was a river, running strong but silently. The gleam of moving water vanished into blind dark; I could not see to the other side. I wondered what would have happened to us if we had been carried to that shore.

“I don’t think we want to get out,” I said. “I think this must be the Styx. This is the cavern where the sacred river runs underground, just the way the boss described.”

“We had to get past the Graeae to reach it,” said Andromeda wonderingly. “Between the eye and the tooth. Old Yiannis
did
know something.”

We were battered, freezing cold, soaked, our mouths and throats parched by salt. But we were where we were supposed to be. The weight on my back, which had nearly killed us in the whirlpool, was the sopping-wet sheepskin. I struggled with the knots in the cord I’d used to fasten it to my shoulders. And there was Athini’s shield, the winged sandals, the
harpe
. I wasn’t meant to lose them.

Andromeda unwound the cloth bundle from around her waist, and found more practical treasures: a skin of fresh water, two flat breads wrapped around some grilled meat; a fire striker and tinder in a tarred, stoppered jar. I was very glad to see the water. I wouldn’t have liked to drink from that river.

“We lost the tallyboards with my instructions,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter.” She had found her loom weights, and a hank of rare purple yarn, in the last fold of her waist cloth. “I wonder why I brought these?”

“You never know. They might come in handy.”

The fire striker wasn’t much use without fuel, but she struck a light anyway, and held up a scrap of burning tow. We saw a river beach backed by a jumble of boulders, driftwood and debris caught between them—just like the shore of a river above ground. We rinsed our mouths, drank a little water and started collecting wood. At least, we might get ourselves warm and dry.

I stretched my cramped limbs and counted bruises. The gloom grew transparent as my eyes became accustomed. There were bones among the rocks, pottery shards, lumpy little votive statues. Old shoes, a broken bracelet. And more mysterious things: crushed cylinders of bright-colored metal, beaten very thin. Tatters of stuff like insect wings, but very tough. There were a lot of strange small coins, neither copper nor silver but some kind of base metal. I started collecting them out of curiosity. Then I remembered that the Greeks put a coin under a dead person’s tongue so that they’ll have the fare for Charon’s ferry, and I dumped them.

“People must throw things into the cavern,” I said. “From up above. The river carries them and drops them here.”

Andromeda?

I’d been sure she was right beside me, but she was kneeling by the river.

“Andromeda? Don’t drink that!”

“I can hear the horses coming.”

“Andromeda?
Come on, wake up, we need wood.”

“The horses and the flying marks are one and the same, you see. Horses are the symbol of power, and the flying marks are a great power.”

“I don’t understand you.”

Her eyes cleared. She came back to herself, and stopped frightening me. We took armfuls of wood back to our mooring place, and I used the
harpe
to scrape tinder and split some kindling. I hoped the sacred blade wouldn’t find this disrespectful, but necessity is a holy thing. The fire we built wasn’t much, but it was wonderfully comforting. We crouched beside it in our salt-soaked rags like shipwrecked sailors, and shared the meat and the flat breads. I’m afraid I got most of the meal. Andromeda said she was hungry, but she soon lost interest. I was still
starving
when every scrap was gone. I went off into a dream about wheat ribbons boiled and then soaked in butter, with stewed vegetables, chopped sausage, a little hot spiced oil. A yogurt and garlic sauce on the side …

“If only we had something to
cook
.“

“Everything was battened down,” she said. “I brought what I could. I didn’t think we’d need a whole kitchen. If this was a proper shipwreck, there’d be shellfish.”

“Sea urchins. Oysters. Grilled crab. You’re going to make me cry.”

“I don’t like sea urchins.”

“I bet you’d eat them now, though.”

She laughed, looked over my shoulder and gasped.

“Perseus!”

The cavern should have been darker outside the light of our fire, but it wasn’t. I looked around and saw a party of young women coming toward us, through the clear gloom: striding free and proud, dressed in black and gold, white arms and shoulders bare. I would’ve thought they were athletes, bull dancers, champion swimmers, nothing so wispy as
nymphs
—except that I knew at once they were not human.

“Hello, Perseus,” said the foremost of them, a tall girl with dark red hair bound in gold ribbons. She wore a short tunic worked with a pattern of pomegranates across the breast, a bow on her back and armlets like a woman warrior’s.

She sat down easily by the fire. “We’ve been expecting you. I’m Minthe.”

“Orphne,” said the second nymph. She was arm in arm with someone harder to make out: not wispy, but confusing, like an image wavering in cloudy water.

“I am Eleione, one of the nymphs of the dead marshes; we are many.”

“I am Lethe,” said a gentle voice: a girl in a long black dress with gold borders who seemed very young; she had huge dark eyes and a dreamy smile.

“I am Styx,” murmured the last of them. Her hair was
loose, a drift of charcoal mist around her white face. She stooped and kissed me on the forehead, gravely and kindly; her breath was cold. “I run over there.”

“Are you the Stygian nymphs?” asked Andromeda.

Of course they are, I thought.

The five beautiful faces turned as one to stare at my companion—as if they hadn’t seen her until she spoke, or as if she had no right to speak to them, which I thought was rude. “We are some of them,” said Minthe. “We are many…. What happened, Perseus? How did you
ever
get here? I’m sure Great Athini and Swift Hermes gave you the most unhelpful, confusing directions. Do tell us all about it!”

Orphne laughed, then reached out to Andromeda and kissed her. “Welcome, daughter of Cassiopeia, the famed queen. What a lovely surprise that you are with us! But wise and beautiful Andromeda, you look as if you’ve been dragged behind a chariot! How did a learned and splendid Phoenician princess fetch up by our sister’s riverside, so bedraggled?”

“It’s a long story,” said Andromeda ruefully.

“We
love
stories,” they cried together.

We told them all about it. We fed the fire, and when there was no more wood, we all went and collected more. Athini had been right, the Stygian nymphs were special. They were the best company: ideal listeners. I could have talked to them forever. I never needed to see the sky again. The underworld was world enough.

“How do you do it?” I asked Lethe. “You make me feel like a poet!”

“We get a lot of practice,” she said modestly. “So
many
stories.”

The tall redhead, Minthe, the one who was
very close
with the king of the dead (she’d let this interesting news slip out once or twice!) gave Lethe a strange look, and leaned over to murmur to me.

“Perseus. Be careful of your girl.”

“What d’you mean,
careful?”
I laughed. “We have no cares now.”

I had almost asked her
what girl
, and that startled me.

Minthe’s breath was clean scented, she whispered like rustling leaves; it was hard to concentrate on what she was actually saying. “I’m talking about
Andromeda
. The girl you came in with, son of Zeus. She’s mortal. She shouldn’t be talking to us.”

I’d known it was strange that Andromeda could see the nymphs and talk to them, but I didn’t want to hear Minthe’s warning. “Oh, I think it’s all right. We’re beside the Styx, aren’t we? It’s the river between death and life. The veils are thin here; that’s probably what makes the difference.”

“A poet and a philosopher,” said Orphne, shaking her head. “It’s plainer than that, Perseus my dear. Princess Andromeda is a dedicated sacrifice. In body she’s no closer to death in this cavern than she would be anywhere, but in her heart and mind
she is halfway across
the river
. So you’d better be careful, that’s all, because we’d love to keep her with us.”