The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Thirty-Three

A howl rises out of the ravine. Shadows, black shapes charging through this dim underworld, all in my direction. It’s not like with the young wolf: I know exactly what these wolves see in me, what they smell on me.

Prey .

I turn and run, but I know each step is only closing the gap between us. One step of mine is five of theirs. I have moments, only a matter of moments, and I can’t escape them like this. I need to get out of here—up these walls, and over the top. But the walls are sheer, hard stone. Nothing to give me purchase…

Then a wild idea crosses my mind. Will it work? It’s all I’ve got.

I pull my mother’s knife from its sheath, and then, panting, I ram it into the stone wall, knee-height. It buries itself deep in the ice and rock, right up to the hilt. Despite myself I shiver at the feeling. Stone might as well be soft flesh to this blade.

Another howl. They’re closing in. I can smell them now, the wolf-pack. My balance will have to be perfect for this. I take a few steps back, then run toward the knife, and leap—and as I hoped it would, my foot lands on the hilt like a step in mid-air. No ordinary knife would take my weight like this, but this is no ordinary knife. And with this foothold, I can reach the extra height I need—up to the gulley’s rim. I grab on with both hands before I can tip over from my teetering position on the blade’s flat edge. My hands bury themselves in the loamy earth at the top of the gulley walls. There are thick roots tangled in the earth, giving me something to grip onto.

The eager howls close in on me as I claw one hand further up over the edge, then haul one leg up. I just manage to clear it over the gulley wall: I’m hanging half-in, half-out, as the wolves’ jaws snap below me and their eyes flash in the moonlight. I can smell the blood-and-iron tang of their hunger, and it seems to me I can feel them, the bristle of their fur, their biting anger at finding me just out of reach. One springs at me, then another, missing me by a few hands-worth. I pull harder, scrabbling in the tangle of rope-like roots, pulling myself bit by bit toward the cold, biting air that says freedom. And at last I roll over the top of the gully, my breath heaving. A baying howl comes from below me.

*

I don’t wait any longer than it takes for me to get my breath back. The wolves are clever enough to trail me to the beginning of the gulley and around the top if they want to. So once I can manage the shaking enough to make use of my arms, I pull myself up into the branches of one of the tall trees lining the gulley’s edge, and start to climb. I climb higher and higher, until at last I come to rest in a broad fork, high above the ground. I snap off the smaller twigs, gathering what vegetation I can to pack in around me. It’s a sort of nest, I suppose—a prickly, unpleasant one, but it may help trap a little warmth. If it is enough to keep me from freezing in the night, I shall be grateful.

Once I have unraveled some of my chiton and knotted it around the branch to keep myself from falling out of it in my sleep, I stare up at the moon for a long time. I think of Eros, and the certainty that has driven me this far, a certainty that sometimes feels like the madness he said would befall me. Where did it come from, this conviction in my blood, this feeling that my fate would be twined with his for the rest of my days? From one look into his eyes? From some words an oracle said? How can such a thing be real—or trustworthy?

If I succeed, if I free him, I will have atoned for what I broke when I broke my vow. But more than that, neither he nor I can hope for. No union between a mortal and a god may last—they serve only as cautionary tales for other mortals through the ages. And yet…there is some conviction that comes, not from the mind, nor from the eyes or hands or any other sense, but from somewhere deep in the bones.

I will find you , I think. I will find you, because I must.

I will continue our story .

And then I suppose I must fall asleep, because I am trapped in my strange eyrie no longer: instead, I am back in Eros’s palace, in the weaving-room, and I am not alone. Three women stand at the loom before me, and they turn to me, surprised, as though I have interrupted them in the middle of their work. I know from the moment I see them that they are gods. It is like when I looked on Eros’s face, except the only feeling that surges in me now is awe, an instinct to drop to one knee and bend my head low. But I resist the urge, and stand my ground.

“Greetings, Moiraie,” I say. “I know who you are.”

For I recognized the Fates at once. One is a maiden, younger than me. One is an old woman, grey-haired and stooped. One is middle-aged. The youngest holds a ball of woven silk, and the old woman...I see the glint of silver shears, held lightly in one hand.

“And we know you, Psycheandra.” The middle one speaks. Her voice is neither warm nor cool, neither kind nor unkind. “We have met before.”

Met before? I do not know how to contradict a goddess.

“On the day you were born,” she adds. “You would not remember.”

A chill goes through me. What is she saying? What can such a thing mean?

“It is true then. I am cursed.”

Her eyes travel over me.

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” she says. “You don’t understand the Fates, mortal. Our loom is not like yours. Yours only goes one way, where our fabric is woven in many directions at once: backwards, and forwards. Warp and weft go hand in hand. Nothing is finished until it’s finished.”

“And how will this story finish?” I say. I had thought this was a dream; I do not think it now.

None of them speak, but the eldest one, the one with the shears, turns toward me then. Her eyes are more ancient than the earth. She raises her hand with the shears in them, and I realize that she means to throw them.

Time slows down as the blades flash, the shears turning over and over in the air, sweeping in a great arc toward me. Does she mean for me to catch them? Or does she mean for them to cut me open? But the image dissolves, swirling like a vision in choppy water. And then I open my eyes, and a gasp of cold air fills my throat.

It’s morning.

And I am still alive.

*

Once I am sure that the wolves are nowhere in sight, the first thing I do is return to the gully to collect my knife. I clean it and sheathe it again at my waist. The morning air smells like ice, and the cold covers me like a second skin—and yet, its chill does not seem to hurt as badly as before. My strange night’s sleep seems to have healed me a little. Even my shoulder, wrenched so badly when Ajax ran away, seems to have regained full movement.

The gulley isn’t so threatening now, in the morning light. Sunlight filters down through the trees, less dazzling than up above where it bounces off the snow and blinds the eyes. Still, I am glad when I can see its end, the glimpse of sunlight ahead. The path starts to slope uphill to high ground again. I hear something—a river?

But once I step out of the gulley, I have to grasp at a tree for support. The fog is all gone now, and I can see what’s ahead of me. A river indeed, and beyond that, on the other side…

Blazing marble; spires taller than my eye can register. It’s like looking at infinity, too dazzling to contemplate. Pillars of crystal catch the light, splintering it into prisms everywhere.

The city of the gods.

I close my eyes, then try again to take it in. Great staircases that wind and weave, seeming to float impossibly in the air. A great dome at the heart of it, and twelve great spires that seem to pierce the sky, the clouds clustering around them. Staircases that link the spires like a coronet among the clouds. And the whole thing drenched in light, as if in this place the sun shines from every corner of the sky at once.

I blink again, and realize something else. There, across the river, it is spring. The banks are thick with hyacinths and violets; trees creep into blossom with pink-and-white blushes; anemones sprout at their feet. I can almost see the warmth in the air, the pale golden glow of it.

A great river divides its peak, the oracle said. You will find him on the other side.

Am I supposed to make my way through this great acropolis of the gods? They will hardly welcome me there, and a tremendous glass wall flanks the base of it.

I remind myself to think one step at a time. I have made it this far—the fog I have been traveling through was surely the fog I saw before at the mountain’s peak. Ajax must be a magical creature indeed, if we were able to scale so far in such a time. I imagine the horse beside me still, huffing gently and stamping the ground. I suppose he knows this place. Perhaps Eros has taken him here many times.

I look back at the dark river, where on this side the snow is still banked high, right up to the water’s edge, and the river itself is a corridor of broken ice, huge tables of it bobbing on the black, frigid depths. The bridge looks to be of a scanty sort, just rope and planks, swaying slightly in the breeze. I must hope that the ropes are tight and not too threadbare, and that the whole construction is enough to hold me.

I step up to the river’s edge and look down. Where it’s not covered by great sheets of drifting ice, the water is black. No sign of life—no waterfowl, no fish, not even moss. I suppose it’s too cold for anything to live in it. In the gaps between the ice, the surface is as steady and calm as a black mirror.

An ice-wind blows off the river and another shiver wracks me, but I take a couple of long breaths, forcing my limbs to be steady. I imagine the feeling of heat; of a strong fire crackling in the hearth of my father’s house, and turn again to the bridge. The river’s not so very wide, really. The bridge is perhaps thirty paces, maybe less.

I take another step and set one foot on the bridge. The movement sets the rope swaying. I’ll need to keep both hands tight on the ropes if I’m not to fall into these icy waters. I take a deep breath, and then step on with my other foot. The bridge sways gently, almost rhythmically, and I take another step, and then another. It feels stable enough after all, moving predictably with each small shift of weight. Soon I’m five paces in, and then eight, and then twelve. A harsh, icy wind blows my hair into my eyes and I blink, shaking it free. No matter: I’m halfway to the other side.

And then I take another step, and the water explodes around me.