The Ruin of Eros

Chapter Two

He explains that soldiers ring the battlements day and night, to be sure no illegal craft lands on the island’s shores.

“The new king says Atlantis must not share its riches. He says Atlantis is for Atlanteans alone, now.” He shakes his head, and one of the others spits on the ground.

“We used to trade freely with the Atlanteans.” He glares out towards the sea. “Our land is poor, not much to farm, but we are fine craftspeople and healers. Our potion-makers can cure most any ailment, and they say our midwives never lose a babe. We have made our way as a town of trades—besides the healers, we have woodworkers and metal workers, clay-fashioners and smiths.” He shrugs darkly. “But now such free exchange is over. And we are to starve with the next harvest, I suppose.”

“Aye,” his friend chips in. “The seeds that die in our earth, sprout green in theirs. The fish that elude us, leap into their nets. Not that they ever did much to deserve such bounty.”

I look at Eros.

This is dark news indeed.

A dead king is nothing special in these lands—those who rule tend to pay with their heads, sooner or later. But how are we to reach Atlantis, now? And if my fancies are real, if my father and sister are there, how do they fare under such a regime? No one gets in or out, the man said. In other words, while the people of this town fear for their livelihoods, the people of Atlantis are all the king’s prisoners.

But Eros has a different thought.

“If the war is over,” he says slowly, “if the blood has dried on the battlefields, Ares will not have lingered here.”

The circle of men snicker.

“The gods will forsake this place altogether, if they have not already. King Kostas does not bother to maintain their shrines. He prides himself on being a self-made man. They say he won his battles without ever once calling on the gods.” He lowers his voice. “Though perhaps he called on worse things.”

“And yet, what could be worse than the gods?” Eros says dryly. One of the men raises an eyebrow. Another chimes in.

“Well, the old king was devout enough—but it seems the gods didn’t care to save him .”

“Questioning the gods now, are we, Isidoros? Do you want to be struck down where you stand?”

While the men bicker, Eros takes me aside, lowers his voice. The sun is lost behind the horizon now, the evening growing colder.

“I fear Atlantis is not the destination for us after all. The gods have abandoned this place.”

I look at him.

“But my family—they could be in there.” I hesitate. “I believe it. I believe that they are inside those walls.” I can’t say why, but I do.

Eros puts a hand over mine.

“They could be anywhere, Psyche. You know this. They could be-” He stops himself from saying the word.

Dead.

“You could fly us,” I point out. “You still have the strength to do that, do you not?”

It has failed, like all his powers have, in the months since Aphrodite ordered his temples boarded up, and his followers disbanded. But I do not think it has failed completely. And Atlantis is not so very far away.

“It is too dangerous,” is all he says. Perhaps he means his wings will give out and he will fall from the sky and drown me, or perhaps only that it will draw the gods’ attention to our whereabouts. Either way, I know that voice of his. It’s the one that brooks no argument.

“What is it you seek on Atlantis, anyway?” One of the men—he speaks like the leader of their small group—calls over to us. He scoffs. “You want to see if the legends are true?”

“My wife has been separated from her family,” Eros says coolly. “We received word that they might have traveled here.”

“Atlantis has had its share of refugees, all right, but no longer.” The man shrugs. “Give it up—you will starve before the king changes his mind.”

I glance at Eros. I can tell he thinks the man is right. He wants me to see sense. He wants us to focus on finding Ares, in the hopes that he will help us. He wants to focus on getting his powers back.

And how can I persuade him otherwise, when I have no answer, no plan? Patience , the sea itself seems to whisper to me, between its sighs and rock-tossed shudders. I glance over at the men. It is almost fully dark now, and soon they must be getting home to their families.

“Surely, sirs, you are right,” I say. “But it is late, too late for us to take to the road tonight. Might we presume upon one of you for some lodging?”

They look at me, as though surprised to hear a woman speak.

Then they glance at each other. No doubt they are imagining what their wives will say if they turn up with two odd strangers, appeared as if by magic out of the mountain passes.

“Come with me, then,” the eldest says. “We’ll find you a place at the table.”

*

The sea’s thrashing has died now. Instead a hushed lapping, irregular.

Inside the hut we’ve been given for the night, the wooden walls seem to exude a salty breath, the briny air sharp in my lungs. The coverings are coarsely woven blankets, itching at my skin. I do not bother asking Eros if he’s awake. He’s always awake. Sleep for him is a kind of meditation, a trance state where he floats as one with the universe. But his eyes are closed, and he seems far away from me.

The walls of the little hut are hung with fishing-nets, strangely luminous in the dark. My eyes drift over them: the kitharis , the small hand-nets, and the bigger ones, drag-nets and seines that will be used to drive whole schools of fish to shore, pushing them towards their death. Depending on what’s to be caught, the men will knot their mesh in different sizes: large enough to let the little fish swim free, and only catch the big ones left behind.

I always used to feel like a little fish, wanting to be big. Now I think perhaps it would have been better after all to stay small; to stay narrow enough to slip unnoticed through the holes.

I reach for the amulet I wear around my neck, touching the cool stone for reassurance. The Shroud—Eros gave it to me many moons ago. It conceals me from the eyes of the gods, if they should search for me in the mortal lands—Eros needs no such thing, of course. He can conceal his whereabouts at will, as can all the gods. I have not taken the amulet off, not for an instant, since the night he gave it to me. But sometimes it feels like scanty protection against what’s out there. Against more than one god who must wish me dead.

I sigh and turn over.

I don’t care what those men said. I have not come all this way only to be turned back at the last. I’ve waited through the many months of winter, snowbound and hungry, for Atlantis, for my family. They have to be there. Because if they’re not, it’s like Eros said. I have no other clue of their whereabouts. They might as well be dead.

*

I bolt up from our bed in the darkness, ears ringing. A klaxon is sounding, and there’s confusion everywhere.

“Eros? Eros!” But he’s awake too, already out of bed, and standing at the door of our tent.

“What is it?” I say, and he turns.

“A boat rowed in—a messenger, by the looks of it.” He grabs the arm of a man going by. It’s a moonless night, and his face is still in the shadows of the tent; they’re safe enough from glimpsing him.

“Tell us what’s happening, man!”

The fellow shrugs off his arm, annoyed.

“In Atlantis the new queen delivers a child, but they say it is a bad birth. They say she is fit to die. The king seeks one of our midwives.”

And he’s gone.

We glance at each other, pull our robes to a hasty decency, and make our way as quickly as we can from the tent, to find a crowd gathered down by the waterfront. A brazier has been lit, its orange light illuminating the clusters of villagers, and beyond them, two men who stand apart, tall and severe, helmeted and armored.

The king’s men.

“Why rush to his aid,” one of the men nearer to us is saying, with a tone of disgust. “He will let us starve, and the Kytherans, and everybody else, no doubt. What do we care about his heir?”

“You will care,” a woman, perhaps his wife, hisses. “You’ll care when he comes to take his vengeance on us because we did not do as he asked. You’ll care when he sends his ships to come and burn what we’ve stored until harvest.”

The tide is growing higher, the night seems more alive. The village is larger than I had thought: from here, I can see the bobbing of small lights, torches flickering many houses away as people run about the streets.

“They are looking for Ekaterini, the birthing-woman,” one of the men we met earlier tells us, his voice gruff. He’s watching the torches bob throughout the village, too.

“She is well known in these parts. No infant nor its mother has died in this village in many years. She has the true gift of Eileiythia.”

Eileiythia, daughter of Zeus, goddess of childbirth. To have her gift would certainly be a happy thing—but it is just as likely that this midwife has only been lucky. I don’t hold with the favor of the gods the way I used to.

The king’s guards stand in their bright armor, arms folded. They speak to no one, not even each other, only now and then barking at one of the villagers, telling them to hurry. But it seems the birthing-woman, Ekaterini, is not in her cottage tonight.

“The witch is probably out gathering her night-herbs,” one of the men grunts. But a woman approaches, breathless.

“She’s been at Leontia’s house, did you not hear? Her baby came at last.”

The guards turn, the bigger one cuffs a youth that stands nearby.

“What are you waiting for, fool? Do you know this house? Then go and get her!”

There is a battering on doors, a chorus of voices, and it seems the woman has been roused from her bed then, for they are making their way back through the streets, not so fast now as before but with urgency. The woman Ekaterini is elderly, perhaps.

Once they can tell she’s been found, people start to move on the waterfront. One of the men is wading into the water, hauling his boat in over the rocks, as though readying it for a journey. Aren’t the guards ferrying the midwife to Atlantis themselves, then? I turn to our host and ask. He shrugs.

“It will save them the trip of bringing her back.”

True enough. And an idea comes to me. A plan, or half a plan—a crumb of a plan—is forming.

“Eros,” I whisper. “This is our chance.”

He looks at me, sees where my thoughts have traveled, and he does not like it. But I take his arms in the darkness, and stare up at his shadowed eyes. When I speak, my voice has all the conviction I know how to muster.

“Eros: we have to be on that boat.”