The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Thirty-Four

It happens so fast, all I understand at first is the roar of breaking ice and thrashing water. And the shadow—the great shadow that suddenly towers over me. Something has reared up out of the water, weaving side to side, scaled and silver, and I’m trapped as the water sluices wildly over the bridge. While the bridge rocks like this I can’t run, only clutch fast to the ropes while my heart explodes in my chest.

A great water-serpent, white-bellied, silver-scaled, towers over me, its three heads weaving together in a horrible, mesmeric dance. What a fool I was, to think I was about to reach my journey’s end! To think that the banks of anemones and sunshine were actually within reach! The beast’s scaly lengths twist and turn like some monstrous vine. Its three heads are searching as it weaves about—searching for me, I know, and yet not seeing me. And I think I know why. There is something blind in the way these heads move. Although there is one great eye in each grotesque head, they are large and pale and empty. This creature is used to the murky depths, I conjecture: not the bright daylight where sun bounces off dazzling snow. No doubt its vision at night or even at dusk would far exceed mine, and I’d be ripped to shreds already. But here, at high noon, I have at least this one advantage. I keep my body down, ducked close to the slats of the bridge as it sways beneath me.

My body is weak. I have not eaten, nor hardly slept; my arrows are all but gone. As for my dagger, its blade is only the size of my hand: even if I were to somehow sink it into the hide of this creature, the beast is enormous. Adamantine or no, the dagger would barely dig into the outer layer of blubber.

I force myself to think clearly. I watch the monster’s blind, weaving dance as it hunts. If it doesn’t rely on sight, then it must rely on smell or sound, or both. Right now in the frigid air, with the wind died down, I doubt it can find me by smell.

Which means it will seek me out through sound. One more footstep, and it will know where I am.

I cannot risk a mad dash across the rest of the bridge. The rope swings too wide for me to move fast enough, especially here at the center, where its arc is widest.

I’ll have to slow it down before I can make my escape.

I feel in the quiver for the poisoned arrows. There are three left. Hopefully it is enough. Will they kill the beast, or merely injure it? Is a monster like this even mortal? But the poison stopped the harpies, I reason: even if it could not kill them, it must be powerful enough to have a strong effect.

First things first. I slip my right foot out of its sandal, as carefully as I can so as not to lose purchase against the bridge’s wet planks. Then I lunge, and fling the sandal over the side of the bridge. It hits the water with a smash and the creature rears, listening intently. I was right. Faster than I knew such a gigantic beast could move, it dives.

But it must know it has been tricked. The three heads search underwater only a few moments before they resurface, searching, sniffing. And now my arrow is notched and ready.

Wait for the moment. I think of my father, standing beside me in the woods as he trained Dimitra and me. I always released too early, he said.

Wait for the moment.

Each eye is large and clouded, almost white. In that moment of stillness, I release the bowstring, and the arrow flies true, landing straight into the eye of the creature’s third head.

It lets out a howl of pain, and thrashes as though it can shake the arrow free. Within moments, it seems, the head hangs limp. But the other two heads hiss and rage, still: if anything, they hiss and rage worse than before. I had hoped one arrow would be enough for the beast, but now I see its three heads must live three separate lives. If I am to take out all of them, it must be one by one. Two more arrows, two more heads: I cannot afford to miss.

One head rears and then another. I glimpse a forked tongue, fangs. The fear inside me is so bright it doesn’t feel like fear, but courage.

I notch another arrow, breathe deeply once more.

Now, Psyche.

I let fly, this time toward the left head. I can feel the arrow’s trajectory even as it spins through the air, and the monster howls in rage as the arrow lands, exactly where I wanted it to. It lets out an unearthly wail, and my blood chills. I suppose this creature is only as violent as the gods that created it—does it deserve this fate? Perhaps not, but there is nothing to be done. I must cross this bridge, I will cross this bridge. And for that, it seems, the serpent must die.

It’s bent over the water now, as though trying to find its own reflection in the black depths, seeking to understand what has happened to it. I notch the last arrow to the bow and breathe deep. From the recesses of memory, my father’s voice comes to me:

Steady does it. That’s right.

And then Dimitra’s voice:

Don’t be a sissy. Just take the shot.

I focus. I breathe. I will the arrow beneath my fingers to fly true. I release.

And the arrow just grazes the side of the beast’s head.

Cold shock runs through my body. It can’t be . My first two shots were perfect. How could this have happened? My last arrow…

I fumble in the quiver, hoping I’ve miscounted. One more arrow, let there be one more. But the only arrows that remain are the birchwood ones, the love arrows, useless as dust.

Unless…

I freeze, as the thought takes shape in my head. The idea is outrageous. Dreadful. Yet perhaps it can work.

But even as I quietly slide one of the arrows out of the quiver, the beast has reared its head again. Its rage seems redoubled, its one remaining head slashing madly through the air. My plan cannot work like this. I must direct its gaze back toward the water, toward its own reflection.

I loose the slipper from my other foot: I’m barefoot on the wet bridge now, and the sodden planks slide too easily underneath me. But I grip the rope, and hurl the slipper wide.

As it hits the river’s surface, the creature cocks its remaining head, shifting it slowly in the direction of the sound. I see its single eye searching, its hesitation.

Look, I urge it in my mind. Look down.

And it does. I let the arrow fly—and this time, it flies true, burying itself easily in the flesh above the creature’s one remaining eye. The monster starts, jolts, but does not look up. Its gaze stays locked on the water’s surface exactly where it was before. The great eye stares back at itself, unblinking.

Mesmerized.

I wait, barely daring to breathe. A moment passes, then another. I shiver on the bridge. A wind sweeps through and the bridge rocks again, but though the slight creak of it makes me wince, the monster doesn’t so much as glance my way. As I watch, it bends even further over the water, as though to study itself more fully; it turns its head one way and then another. And then it lets out a call that makes me shudder from head to toe. I have heard its cries of hunger and rage, and even pain. This was none of those: it was some kind of mating call. I swallow down the bile in my throat.

I could hurl a rock into the river, I suspect, and it would not turn my way. It strikes me that after all, perhaps the poisoned arrows are the less evil of the two. Love—at least, this kind of love; this mad, senseless infatuation—might be the greater curse.

I turn, gripping the rope, to look toward the far shore. A mere fifteen paces away. The icy air flays my back, my chiton frozen solid in parts. And yet so close in front of me is this vision of spring, bright and green and strewn with flowers. I have to close my eyes for a moment to gather myself. I tell myself not to look back—the doomed beast, the frozen river, the desolate lands behind me, I must will them from my mind now. I must move forward.

Breathe, Psyche.

I take a step, and then another. And then two more. Soon I am ten paces from the far bank. Then five. Then only one step remains.

The grassy verge is hyacinth-strewn and perfumed. Just one step more will do it. And yet my feet freeze where they are. I don’t know if I could bear it, if it should all turn out to be a mirage—and why shouldn’t it be one? Since I began this journey, betrayal has never been more than a breath away. Why should this moment be different? Perhaps the moment my foot touches the ground, the hyacinths will shrivel to ash, the ground will turn barren and hopeless. And I don’t know if I could survive that.

But I’ve come this far. I breathe in, breathe out. I open my eyes.

And my foot touches the ground.