The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Twenty-Six

I whirl around. She’s familiar, but for a moment not familiar enough at first for me to place.

“Melite,” she says, seeing the uncertainty in my eyes. “Melite Georgiou.”

Georgiou. Of course. She’s little Hector’s mother. Memories flash through my mind, sudden as a knife. Yiannis helping me into the chariot, Father hoisting Melite’s son up to stand beside me in our chariot. Everyone smiling, proud in the sunshine.

Another lifetime. Another world. I swallow down the memory.

Melite looks older than she did before. She is perhaps only ten years my senior, but the blue shadows around her eyes have the look of someone with years more than that.

“Your cloak hides you well,” she says. “I was not sure…I thought my eyes must be playing tricks on me. They play many tricks, these days.”

“You thought me dead.”

“I heard differing accounts,” she admits. “Some said you had been carried off by a demon. Some said by a god. Some said you were swallowed whole by a serpent.” She looks at me. “Either way, I did not expect to see you again.”

“Nor I you,” I say honestly, but if she asks for the truth of what happened to me, I must lie.

“I doubted whether I would ever see anyone from Sikyon again.”

Her large brown eyes look at me with such a heaviness, it’s hard to meet her gaze.

“You know what happened to us, then?”

I nod. Does she blame me for it? Does it anger her, to find me well and unharmed?

“We lost him.” She speaks quietly. “Hector. We lost him in the rubble.” She swallows. “My daughter survived. So did my husband and I. But Hector…we lost him.”

The pain curls in my throat. Hector . I think of the crown of flowers on his head; his boyish, sweaty palms. The faint fuzz on his upper lip. Just a child.

Gone.

I raise my head and force myself to look at her.

“ Tis lypes mou ,” I manage, but my voice is shaking. Is this really all I have to offer her—my sorrows? She will never see her only son again.

She stares back at me, and in her gaze I see Hector: all that he would have been, all that he will now never be. I understand what she meant, when she said her eyes play tricks on her now. She sees him still. She will always see him, perhaps.

“I don’t blame you, Psycheandra,” she says at last. “I don’t know why those boulders fell, or what it is that stirs the finger of the Fates. The tempers of the gods are beyond my ken. But you went to the cliff to save Sikyon; you deserve no blame for what came next.”

I wish that felt as true in my heart as it sounds on her lips. I cannot help but think now, what if Eros had never intervened? Hector would not be dead then.

But I remember what Eros said when I voiced that thought before. A life is not a coin that can be traded for another. For better or worse, no such bargain exists. I was saved, and now I have my life and must use it. My grief won’t bring back Hector, nor will guilt or regret. Instead I vow to one day do something great in his name.

“We will keep the memory of him burning,” I say quietly.

“ Tha thymithoúme ,” she responds. We will remember .

We look at each other in silence for a while, and then she gestures, indicating over my shoulder.

“They are moving,” she says. “You are being summoned.”

*

She sits on a three-legged stool, before a deep opening in the rock. Across the divide there is a small bench, where petitioners are to sit, I suppose. When I see her round, young face, I can’t help blinking in surprise. I had expected an old woman—wizened, ancient, a crone. The Pythia has served at Delphi for hundreds of years, after all, not that anyone truly believes it’s been the same person all that time. Despite the girl’s young face, her lush, thickly braided hair is bone-white. She regards me with large, pale eyes.

“Sit, daughter of Sikyon,” she gestures.

I take my seat. Daughter of Sikyon . Is it her gift that speaks, or was I asked for that information earlier? I can’t remember.

“What do you wish to know?” she says. Her voice is light, like a child’s. Somehow, after these days of riding, and these many hours of waiting, I’m tongue-tied. I have questions buried inside me that I haven’t yet figured out how to ask. But there is one above all that drove me here.

“My father, my sister. I was told they escaped the devastation of Sikyon. Is it true?”

“It is true,” she says. A lump forms in my throat when she speaks the words and I cannot look at her. The relief, the gratitude, is too overwhelming. I did not hope in vain .

“Then I must find them,” I say. “Where are they?”

She does not speak for a while, and I grow restless. Has she not heard me? Does she refuse my second question?

“Nowhere, yet,” she says at last.

Her words do not make sense—they must be somewhere —but she speaks them so definitively.

“You will not find them if you search now,” she carries on. “It is not your path.”

I stare.

“My path ?”

“Your path is through the gods, daughter of Sikyon.” She keeps her cool eyes on me. “The god who is your husband. Aid him, and he will aid you.”

A cold, prickling feeling spreads over my skin. Husband. She knows everything about me already. And she speaks as if this god and I were still bound together; as if those reckless promises still endure. But he told me to run. To forget.

“ Aid him?” I repeat. She must see how absurd the notion is. “What need has a god for mortal aid!”

She gives me a serious look.

“Your god is…much diminished. A god’s temple is his place of strength. A container for his energy, his power. Eros’s temple is broken, and that has weakened him.”

I swallow.

“His temple at Sikyon, you mean? Did I make that happen?” But I am sure I already know the answer.

Her unblinking eyes are fixed on me, making the hairs on my neck stand up.

“To break a god’s vow, in the god’s own temple…it creates a deep rupture in the fabric of things. An unraveling. It is like a tremor in the earth—one that the gods may sense.”

“So it is my fault.”

“Blame is irrelevant,” she says. “What was fated came to pass.”

Fate. That slippery word that I am coming to hate.

“The rupture you spoke of,” I swallow. “Was that what brought the goddess to him?”

I remember that shadowy form taking shape in the corner of the room. Eros’s doomed expression. He knew she was coming; that something had alerted her.

The oracle nods.

“Aphrodite’s third son is her great pride. The one made in her image: a god of love, whose beauty can transfix the eye. Since his boyhood she has made a companion of him, and bound him to her with oaths of loyalty. She is a doting and jealous mother. Eros thought to defy her wishes and keep his defiance a secret, but he was found out. To the goddess, his actions were a betrayal of the worst order.”

My stomach turns over. It’s nothing I didn’t already know, but hearing her speak it aloud fills me with dread.

The oracle shoots me a curious look.

“Her pride in him was so great that when he was still a boy, the goddess boasted that no human could look upon him without being driven mad by his beauty. Whether she meant it as a prophecy I do not know, but a prophecy it became. The boy could not roam freely like the other gods—not without causing pain and destruction. When he left Olympus, he learned to cloak his face.”

She adjusts her seat, leans closer.

“And yet you do not seem mad,” she says.

My heart flutters.

“I do not feel it. Perhaps—perhaps the madness is just a legend,” I say.

The oracle merely raises her eyebrows.

“Perhaps.”

Her gaze comes to rest then on something over my shoulder.

“You are armed, I see.” She reaches out a hand. “May I?”

I hesitate, then realize what she’s talking about, and pass her the quiver of arrows. She slides one out and examines it. The arrows are of two different colors, I notice for the first time. Half are made with a dark wood, cedarwood perhaps; the other half are almost white, like birch.

“Love and death,” the oracle nods. “You must be careful which you choose.”

“I—I’m not sure I understand,” I stammer.

She gives me a patient look, as though she knows that deep down, I do know.

“This one,” she points to the birch wood, “has the effect of a love spell—an infatuation, if you like. The other, instant death. To mortal creatures, that is.” She fingers one of the cedarwood arrows, then drops it back into the quiver. “Eros may be a love-god, but he is the son of Ares, too. Be careful. They need only pierce the skin to take effect.”

She hands the quiver back to me. I hesitate.

“You said Eros was weakened,” I say finally. “After the temple. What do you mean?”

The oracle looks at me like she’s been waiting for me to ask, and my stomach sinks again. There’s something she’s preparing me for, something she wants me to do.

“His powers are much diminished, and in his weakened state, Aphrodite has imprisoned him. She has hidden him from the eyes of the other gods, and conscripted her other sons to guard him.”

I listen, my heart quickening.

“To what end? When will she release him?”

The Pythia shakes her head.

“When she has bent him to her will. When he is broken.”

Broken. I stare out over the mountains of Delphi, the dust-brown earth and the scrub of green; the blue of distant hills. Aphrodite and her two other sons, three against one. What does it mean, to break a god’s will? I run my finger over one of the cedarwood arrows, its smooth feather-tail.

“But what can I do? I am a mortal. He is a god.”

“And so you think yourself powerless?”

“Gods have all the power that matters.” I am impatient now. “All they leave us with are prayers.”

She cocks her head to the side at that, as though considering my words.

“Nevertheless,” she says finally, “you must decide.”

I stare at her placid, quiet face. I open my mouth, then close it again. This is madness.

“What are you asking of me? What aid would you have me offer?”

The Pythia nods.

“You must go to Mount Olympus. You must ascend its slopes.”

Olympus! Mortals don’t go to that place. It simply doesn’t happen.

“It will be difficult. Do not stray from the path. Do not become distracted. You must listen carefully to your instincts. There is a great river that divides its peak. You will find him on the other side.”

“But…you said he has been hidden there. How am I to find him?”

She nods.

“Do not let your eyes grow dazzled. You must seek out the darkness, daughter of Sikyon. You will not find him in the light.”

A knot grows in my stomach.

“What darkness?”

But her lips only tighten.

“You will know it when you see it,” is all she says. “If you are watching.”

I swallow hard. Maybe Herakles, or Theseus, or some other god-child could make it up to the top of Mount Olympus, but I have heard things about the mortals who dare to seek the gods’ own realm, the ones brave or foolish enough to climb the slopes that were made to keep us out. There are stories of monsters, of spells darker than in any tales of the Great Poets. It is arrogance to think that we can journey at will through lands we were never fated to walk. And yet apparently I am to attempt it.

“And will he be returned to me?” I say. “If I do this? If I go?”

She blinks slowly.

“You have a chance.”

“A chance,” I repeat. “A good chance?”

Her gaze moves away: she does not like my demand for guarantees. She gives a tiny shrug.

“A chance,” she says.

A chance.

My heart’s beating fast. The quiver of arrows is still in my hand. I replace it, very gingerly, against my back. Mortals don’t play with the gods , a voice inside reminds me.

Or if they do, they lose.

There is silence then, as if she believes we have reached the end of our time. And indeed, I see that two guards are walking this way, ready to escort me out. No one is allowed too much of the oracle’s time. But I can’t make myself rise. My legs won’t do it.

“You said my path was with Eros,” I say quickly. “That he would aid me, if I aided him. You mean that…that if I succeed in this, he will help me find my family?” My chest tightens. “I will see them again?”

She inclines her head. It seems a long time before she speaks.

“They are alive. But according to my sight, you will not see them again as a mortal.”

Her voice is soft with understanding, and my throat swells. A grief I can’t swallow. The blue hills blur. Her words are lodged in my chest.

I am not to see them again in this life.

I must wait out its end, when we are reunited in Hades’ realm. I feel weightless, strangely numb.

I have always known that I must wait until the hereafter to meet my mother. But I had not thought to wait until then to see the rest of my family, too. I had thought to have their companionship through much more of this life.

I bow my head. The tears do not come. I feel them inside me, but they do not come.

“I will grieve them,” I say quietly, and the oracle nods.

“Such are our lives, daughter of Sikyon.”

I stand up, stumbling, as the guards draw in. Before they reach us, she glances my way again.

“You said now that mortals have only prayer, and no power.” Her eyes find mine. “I counsel you to remember, prayer may be power too.”

Her words tumble around me as the guard’s hand closes around my arm.