The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Four

Someone faints; others are shouting. In the chaos, suddenly my father is by my side.

“Psyche, come away.” His voice is strained, as though he too has been shouting. He sounds ill.

I let him lead me through the crowd. He throws his cloak over me, but despite the chaos people spot me as he shepherds me through.

Curse is the word I hear then. Cursed.

For a moment I think some of the men will try to stop me, seeing the wild look in their eyes as Father steers me past, but something holds them back. They don’t want to touch me.

I stumble as we reach the edge of the crowd.

“Psyche, what did you do ?” a voice hisses.

It’s Dimitra, her green eyes wide with alarm. Or is it anger?

“We’re going home,” my father says firmly. Small rocks skitter as we hurry down the mountainside, as if we can escape what just happened.

As if we can escape the hand of the gods.

*

I watch from upstairs as Yiannis’s father, Kirios Demou, arrives to our house—no sign of his wife, though, nor of Yiannis. The look of his short, stocky frame has never inspired fear in me before.

I hear the door open, then close; from downstairs comes the sound of men’s low voices, much too somber. My father and Kirios Demou are used to laughing together, patting each other on the back as successful men do. But not today.

Since we arrived home and locked the doors, Father’s been saying how it’s all a great misunderstanding, how the town overreacted to what was simply a bad summer storm.

But I know it’s more than that.

When I creep downstairs I hear quiet voices coming from Father’s study. I move toward the door to listen, but Dimitra comes along the corridor, beating me to it.

“What’s going on?” she hisses, grabbing my arm. Her hair is wet: she usually dries it out in the atrium, flung forward in the sun. It is a lengthy procedure that happens once each week, and I know she must be very concerned by Kirios Demou’s visit to have abandoned it.

Father would be outraged to find us listening at the door, but everything is different now. We press our ears against it and hold our breath.

“It cannot be helped.” Kirios Demou’s voice is slightly muffled. “You know well, Andreos, that I have done everything to maintain my family’s good standing in the eyes of the gods. We tithe our profits and our harvest. We are godly people, and Yiannis follows in our footsteps. We cannot risk everything, after decades of right-living. It is not for me to say what Psycheandra has done to so offend the Divinity, nor is it for me to judge…”

But from the smug tone of his voice, I know he is judging, and enjoying it.

“…Though the word is,” he goes on, “she has compared herself most brazenly to Aphrodite. Parading around like that, as though she were the goddess herself and not a mere actor. I regret to say it, Andreos, but I noticed it myself, the girl’s grave absence of humility.” He pauses. “All I know is that we can’t have our family—our only son—mixed up in it. I do regret this, Andreos. It would have been a good alliance, and she was a most pleasing girl.”

Was . He speaks of me as though I were dead.

I swallow, and glance over at Dimitra’s dark eyes. So my marriage to Yiannis is not to be. My brain turns around the thought like a slow carriage-wheel. No more of those bright eyes, those warm hands, that smooth, teasing voice. No more of those approving looks from Kirios and Kiria Demou when they pass me on the street; there will be no newly built home for us on the Demou land, with my own linens to choose and my own kitchen to run.

In theory I am back on the market, but who would have me now, after the Demous’ rejection? Last week Father could have married me off to any family in town. Today, it seems I am a pariah.

Women who stay unmarried here may go to live in a sister’s house, or a cousin’s, where they have little status, helping to tend the sleepless infants and taking on the more thankless tasks, halfway between family and servant. Is that to be my life now?

There are those, too, who stay unmarried by choice. Those who have refused to play by the rules. The town has a label for each of them: witches, freaks, or whores. What they all have in common is that they are not afraid of the townsfolk; it’s the town that’s afraid of them.

But you have to be brave, to live that way. I doubt I am so brave.

“You must see,” I hear Kirios Demou’s voice again. “It cannot be helped. I only hope that the town’s judgment will not be harsher.”

I have not heard Father say a word this whole time, though I can picture his face—that stormy look he gives you when you’re saying something he dislikes, that gets stormier and stormier until you feel you might lose your nerve completely. But then he speaks, and it shocks me. His voice is not stormy at all. There’s no anger, no righteous indignation.

“Kirios Demou…” There’s a tremor in his voice. Who is this man; where is my outraged father? Dimitra stares at me, her eyes wide like mine.

“...I cannot pretend this comes as a shock. I will not ask you to reconsider. But can I ask you to delay any announcement a little longer? I confess, I am fearful of what may come next.” He sounds almost pleading.

“For my sake and my daughters’, sir…it is important that the Council see we still have friends and allies. Just until the worst of this has blown over…”

Dimitra pulls away abruptly, the blood drained from her face. She doesn’t look at me, just runs along the corridor in the direction of the kitchen. I’m torn—do I stay, and wait to hear more?

I swallow hard, and follow down the corridor after my sister. I find her in the kitchen, pacing between the empty vats and stoves like a madwoman.

“Never mind, sister. Perhaps I shall make a good spinster,” I joke, or try to. I thought it might make me feel better. It doesn’t, but it certainly gets Dimitra’s attention. When she looks up at me her face is furious.

“You don’t understand, do you?”

I stare at her, trying to figure out what she’s so enraged about. I’m the one whose future is being ripped apart.

“The Council,” she spits. “What do you think Father’s so scared of? Hmm?” She drums a finger against her temple as though I’m slow-witted.

Perhaps I am. Because it’s only now that I’m wondering what exactly Father meant by what may come next. He’s afraid of something, and Dimitra is too.

“You think Father will lose his seat on the Council?” I frown. It would be shaming, for him and for the family.

Dimitra looks wild-eyed.

“You think that’s the worst that can happen, Psyche? The way Father cossets you, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you still think like a child!” She pinches the bridge of her nose, closes her eyes.

“Expulsion, Psyche,” she breathes.

Banishment .

“They will turn you out upon the roads.”