The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Twenty

This can’t be real.

What I’m seeing isn’t the town I know. It’s a town destroyed. Buried alive. As though there was some sort of avalanche, as though the mountain itself gave way.

It can’t be real. The enchantments on this place have a life of their own; they’re playing some cruel joke. I push the back of my hand against my mouth to stop the bile from surging upward.

I fling open the bedroom door, feeling only the pounding through my body, seeing only darkness. He’s not here. The room is empty. I hurtle through it, into the corridors.

I don’t know where he goes at night, where he sleeps, if he sleeps. I move blindly, without instinct.

“Demon!” I shout, but my voice comes out strangled. “Where are you? Answer me!”

He knows what happened. He must know.

It’s not real , I tell myself. And yet another voice, deeper inside, disagrees.

It’s real. All too real.

He said he searched for my family. He said they were not in Sikyon. That they were gone.

“Are they dead?” I hurl the words into the darkness. I don’t stop moving, I can’t. “Answer me: are they dead? ”

I take each turn at a run, the thin torch-flames my only light. It doesn’t matter: I see nothing but the visions in my mind.

“You will not hide from me!” My voice rises and cracks, hardly human. “Answer me, what has become of my home!”

And then, there he is. A dark form in the darkness.

“Psyche…”

“I saw it. I saw Sikyon. In the window.” I sag like a reed. My face is wet. My voice is pleading now, as though he can save me from what I’ve just seen, but beneath it I feel rage, readying the next wave.

My voice shudders no matter how I try to control it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I tell you such a thing?” His tone is steady, abominably so. How can he address me so evenly, even now!

“How could you not tell me?” I shout.

“Listen to me,” he says. “I did not see them among the dead. There was a quake in the earth, as you have been shown: the mountain fell. When I went to seek out your people, I found a scene of devastation there. But more fled the town than were killed, Psyche. That is what I am trying to tell you.”

I stare at him.

“What are you saying? They are alive?”

“I’m saying I did not see your father or sister among the bodies, or hear word of their death.”

I slam my hand against the wall.

“In other words, you offer me nothing! My family may be dead, may be alive! They lie buried under all that rubble, for all you know!”

“There is very little in life that is certain,” he says, carefully. “I am telling you what I know. The rest we must wait for.”

His voice is cool, logical. Free of all emotion. But images flash through my mind: limbs, helpless outstretched hands, dusty and lifeless under fallen stone. Sounds of wailing and keening that echo through ruined streets. How can he speak this way! How can he try to—to philosophize about such horror?

And then I realize something else.

Aphrodite’s husband is Hephaestus: the blacksmith of the gods, the one whose flaming forges lie below our mountains, ever-ready to erupt. The one whose hammer and anvil rattle the bones of the earth. But they have never rattled Sikyon before.

“This isn’t coincidence, is it?” My voice shakes.

The demon told me before now: if Aphrodite heard she’d been thwarted, things would go badly for us. They say Hephaestus is devoted to her. That he does anything she asks.

“It’s retribution, isn’t it? It’s because of me.”

He is silent. I want him to tell me I’m claiming too much, that it’s arrogance to imagine I’m the reason for all this. But he doesn’t say that.

“How could you keep this from me?” I whisper. This whole time. This whole time, I knew nothing.

“It was better that you did not know,” he says stiffly.

The audacity of his words!

“Better! According to your judgement? Better that I know nothing of the death—the murder —of my townspeople? That I know nothing of my family’s suffering?” My breath is shallow; my legs feel unsteady.

Father, Dimitra…did they flee with the survivors? Or are they in Hades’ realm now, after all? And what of the others? Too many faces flash through my mind. Neighbors, friends, merchants we’ve frequented for years. What about the Georgioues? What about Yiannis ?

“What would it have achieved?” Something else has crept into his voice now, something that shores up any crack where guilt or remorse might have settled. And when I look up, everything about him is as blank as that stupid cloak, that faceless face.

“How many dead?” I whisper.

Silence answers me.

“ How many? ”

He lifts one shoulder, minutely.

“They are mortals,” he says then. “Their deaths would have come anyway, whether today or tomorrow.”

“ I’m a mortal!” I slam a fist against the wall. “Death may mean nothing to you, but it is everything for us!” My head throbs. “You have no soul. You are a scourge, a disease. You may live forever, demon, but you will bring no goodness to this world.”

He says nothing. No angry retorts or shallow self-defense. He doesn’t even move. But I can’t look at him any longer. I turn on my heel and go back to my room, to stare through the night at the ruins of my home.

And then, by morning, I have a plan.

*

I wait for the first rays of light. I know the rhythms of this house by now. Soon Aletheia will come out of the kitchen with the key, and go down to let the horses out. But not this morning: this morning will be different.

I’ve been a fool, waiting here for the demon to return with news of my family. Thinking he would help me find them. Thinking he was my ally. All he offers me is lies.

I slink into the corridors and along to the door I know so well.

The birds chirrup and flutter—the smaller ones, at least, those clustered in the cage next to where I’m standing. They think I am here to feed them.

“Not food, little friends,” I say. “Something better than that.”

And I take the small, golden latch and slide it across. I pull back the panel and stand back, leaving the large square opening in the aviary wall, and I wait.

For the first few moments nothing changes, and my stomach rolls over. Don’t they understand? Have these creatures lost themselves so far, that they cannot recognize freedom when they see it?

But then one little red bird twitters, and takes a curious hop toward the opening, and hops again, out of the cage. It flies dizzily for a moment, circling left, then right, disoriented. Finally it lands on the doorframe, perches there, and begins to sing.

As if drawn by the tune, a couple more birds fly out, and then a few more. And then more, faster now, and it seems to me the dam is breaking. Soon there is a steady stream of them, and the ones in the cage are growing agitated. They paid little attention to that first bird, or the first ten or twenty, but now that their brethren are freeing themselves by the dozen, the rest are clamoring and protesting. Everyone wants out.

The chaos intensifies, rising toward a fever pitch, and for a while I’m worried they’ll destroy each other. The birds still in the cage are in a frenzy now: the entrance is too small for many of them to escape at once. Some are pecking at each other in between trills and shrieks. One is bashing itself against the cage in its fever to be released.

“Hush,” I try to coax them. “You’ll all have your turn.” But soon I have to step back from the cage as the birds come racing out, filling the room, a jumble of feathers and color and sound, beating wings everywhere, squawks and deafening calls. They seem to take up more space outside the cage than in, and they just seem to keep coming.

But this is what I wanted.

I fight my way through the maelstrom of birds toward the door, and manage to fling it open. I stumble into the corridor and the birds burst out behind me, like some kind of stampede, cawing and shrieking. It occurs to me that perhaps the cage, too, was enchanted—that it contained more birds than even its tremendous size should have allowed, because there seems now to be no end of these birds, flooding out of the room in such chaos.

But can I control the chaos?

Ducking, I run forward at a crouch, trying to avoid the swoosh of beaks and feathers and talons. I scurry toward the front of the cloud. Will they follow me? They only have two choices, backwards or forwards. I run as fast as I can. Some flap and swoop behind me, while others are already ahead of me, swarming the corridor to the limit of my sight. I worry for a moment I’ll lose my bearings and forget which turns are the ones to take, so camouflaged is everything by the frenzy of birds. But I race on. There are so many of them! If only a fraction took this path with me, it would still be enough.

It is a mad sort of plan, I realize. But here is what I know:

That I cannot wait another day to free myself from this place.

That Aletheia will be making her way down these corridors any moment now.

That she will be carrying the key I need to escape.

The demon said she had some fear of birds, and this wild cloud of beaks and talons would frighten anyone, I think.

But as we race along them, the corridors are all empty. Aletheia is late. Why is she late?

When I reach the door of the great-room I fling it open, and the birds flood in. I watch, mouth agape. For how enormous the room is, I can’t believe how they fill it. Feathers that were shed in skirmishes flutter to the ground everywhere, all the colors of the rainbow; suddenly there are droppings, too, on the rugs and the divans. And the noise…

I don’t know if it’s the noise that summons her, but it seems only moments before the door across the room opens. I’m afraid she’ll retreat then, but it’s too late: the birds have crowded her already, and the door has closed behind her. I hear her shriek and see her crouch, covering her head. I hold my breath, watching from the doorway, although in this vortex of color and noise she’ll never see me.

She’s carrying my morning bread-and-water, and it’s the bread that interests the birds: they duck and dive, squawking louder, their calls vying with Aletheia’s screams. Though they’re not attacking her, I suppose it feels like they are.

The bread and water are not all that have tumbled to the ground: I heard the clang of the key fall from her grip. My mad escape plan just might work. I dart as silently as I can across the room—Aletheia is shielding her head, shouting, and does not see me—and in a moment I’m grasping the cold metal in my hand.

There’ll be little enough time. Aletheia’s shrieking will alert him soon. No doubt he’ll quiet the birds with a word or two of enchantment, and they’ll notice the key is gone, and come for me.

I run back through the corridors, on and on until I reach the yard, my chest pumping in the cool dawn air. I find the lock, jiggle the key. It takes a few tries, but then I feel the release of the bolt and the gate clanks ajar. I swallow hard. I want to push it back, all the way back, and see whatever’s out there. But I need one more thing first.

I hurry across the yard and into the stables. This part may be madder than the last—but my escape has been noisy and unsubtle, not the stealthy kind I had earlier hoped to devise. I have a head-start of a few minutes at best: if I leave on foot, he will catch me.

All or nothing. I must try.

I take a breath, and push open the door to the first stall. There he is, the black stallion, the one I heard the demon name as Ajax. He is taller, even, than I remembered. For a moment I almost lose my nerve. Then I glance back toward the palace door, and remind myself that any moment now, he will be coming for me.

And that my family needs me.

“Hush, it’s all right.”

I try to fit the bridle over the stallion’s ears; he whinnies, shying back away from me, his enormous hooves stamping the ground. Perhaps he reads my own anxiety. I pat his side, hoping to convince him.

“It’s all right. We’re going to get out of here, you and I.”

I stroke his mane and then bury my hand in it, trying to secure a good grip—there are no stirrups to hoist me up, so I’ll have to throw myself onto him. Dimitra could do this , I tell myself.

But the attempt takes me only halfway. I land with just my arm splayed across the stallion’s back, the rest of me dangling. He grunts, steps back quickly, dislodging me with a thump to the ground.

“Come on, boy. Come on,” I murmur. This time I take a running leap. I hold my breath, I am determined—and somehow I make it onto his back. I scramble for purchase, burying my hands in the mane, tugging myself toward a sitting position.

But now he’s spooked. He bumps the walls of the stall, whinnying, and then while I’m still struggling for my grip, he rears up. I feel my neck snap back, my body sailing through the air.

The ground is hard as slate. The breath is gone from my body. The stallion’s whinnying, stomping. Then he’s rearing again, his great hind legs much too near me. I need to move my leg but my mind can’t seem to command my limbs. He’s going to trample me. He’s going to trample me, and then it will all be over.

The great hind legs come down.

I hear someone scream, and the world goes white.