“That’s it,” he said.
“That’s the worst prophecy I’ve ever heard,” I said.
He sighed. “I know. I think I lost my cup.”
I did not dream of him, as I said. I did not braid his name with mine. At night we lay together, and by midnight he was gone, and I could rise and step into my woods. Often my lion would pace beside me. It was the deepest pleasure, walking in the cool air, the damp leaves brushing at our legs. Sometimes I would stop to harvest this flower or that.
But the flower I truly wanted, I waited for. One month I let go by after Hermes and I first spoke, and then another. I did not want him watching. He had no place in this. It was mine.
I did not bring a torch. My eyes shone in the dark better than any owl’s. I walked through the shadowed trees, through the quiet orchards, the groves and brakes, across the sands, and up the cliffs. The birds were still, and the beasts. All the sounds were the air among the leaves and my own breath.
And there it was hidden in the leaf mold, beneath the ferns and mushrooms: a flower small as a fingernail, white as milk. The blood of that giant which my father had spilled in the sky. I plucked a stem out of the tangle. The roots clung hard a moment before yielding. They were black and thick, and smelled of metal and salt. The flower had no name that I knew, so I called it moly, root, from the antique language of the gods.
Oh, Father, did you know the gift you gave me? For that flower, so delicate it could dissolve beneath your stepping foot, carried within it the unyielding power of apotrope, the turning aside of evil. Curse-breaker. Ward and bulwark against ruin, worshipped like a god, for it was pure. The only thing in all the world you could be certain would not turn against you.
Day by day, the island bloomed. My garden climbed the walls of my house, breathed its scent through my windows. I left the shutters open by then. I did what I liked. If you had asked me, I would have said I was happy. Yet always I remembered.
Cold smoke, marked with my name.
Chapter Nine
IT WAS MORNING, THE sun just over the trees, and I was in the garden cutting anemones for my table. The pigs snuffled at their slops. One of the boars grew fractious, shoving and grunting to air his authority. I caught his eye. “Yesterday, I saw you blowing bubbles in the stream, and the day before the spotted sow sent you off with a bitten ear and nothing more. So you may behave.”
He huffed at the dirt, then flopped on his belly and subsided.
“Do you always talk to pigs when I am gone?”
Hermes stood in his traveling cloak, his broad-brimmed hat tilted over his eyes.
“I like to think of it the other way around,” I said. “What brings you out in the honest daylight?”
“A ship is coming,” he said. “I thought you might want to know.”
I stood. “Here? What ship?”
He smiled. He always liked seeing me at a loss. “What will you give me if I tell you?”
“Begone,” I said. “I prefer you in the dark.”
He laughed and vanished.
I made myself go about the morning as I usually would, in case Hermes watched, but I felt the tension in myself, the taut anticipation. I could not keep my eyes from flicking to the horizon. A ship. A ship with visitors that amused Hermes. Who?
They came at mid-afternoon, resolving out of the bright mirror of the waves. The vessel was ten times the size of Glaucos’, and even at a distance I could see how fine it was: sleek and brightly painted, with a huge rearing prow-piece. It cut through the sluggish air straight towards me, its oarsmen rowing steadily. As they approached, I felt that old eager jump in my throat. They were mortals.
The sailors dropped the anchor, and a single man leapt over the low side and splashed to shore. He followed the seam of beach and woods until he found a path, a small pig trail that wound upwards through the acanthus spears and laurel groves, past the thorn-bush thicket. I lost sight of him then, but I knew where the trail led. I waited.
He checked when he saw my lion, but only for a moment. With his shoulders straight and unbowed, he knelt to me in the clearing’s grass. I realized I knew him. He was older, the skin of his face more lined, but it was the same man, his head still shaved, his eyes clear. Of all the mortals on the earth, there are only a few the gods will ever hear of. Consider the practicalities. By the time we learn their names, they are dead. They must be meteors indeed to catch our attention. The merely good: you are dust to us.
“Lady,” he said, “I am sorry to trouble you.”
“You have not been trouble yet,” I said. “Please stand if you like.”
If he noticed my mortal voice, he gave no sign. He stood up—I will not say gracefully, for he was too solidly built for that—but easily, like a door swinging on a well-fitted hinge. His eyes met mine without flinching. He was used to gods, I thought. And witches too.
“What brings the famous Daedalus to my shores?”
“I am honored you would know me.” His voice was steady as a west wind, warm and constant. “I come as a messenger from your sister. She is with child, and her time approaches. She asks that you attend her delivery.”
I eyed him. “Are you certain you have come to the right place, messenger? There has never been love between my sister and me.”
“She does not send to you for love,” he said.
The breeze blew, carrying the scent of linden flowers. At its back, the muddy stink of the pigs.
“I’m told my sister has bred half a dozen children each more easily than the last. She cannot die in childbirth and her infants thrive with the strength of her blood. So why does she need me?”
He spread his hands, deft-looking and thickened with muscle. “Pardon, lady, I can say no more, but she bids me tell you that if you do not help her there is no one else who can. It is your art she wants, lady. Yours alone.”
So Pasipha? had heard of my powers and decided they could be of use to her. It was the first compliment I had had from her in my life.
“Your sister instructed me to say besides that she has permission from your father for you to go. Your exile is lifted for this.”
I frowned. This was all strange, very strange. What was important enough to make her go to my father? And if she needed more magic, why not summon Perses? It seemed like some sort of trick, but I could not understand why my sister would bother. I was no threat to her.
I could feel myself being tempted. I was curious, of course, but it was more than that. This was a chance to show her what I had become. Whatever trap she might set, she could not catch me in it, not anymore.
“What a relief to hear of my reprieve,” I said. “I cannot wait to be freed from my terrible prison.” The terraced hills around us glowed with spring.
He did not smile. “There is—one more thing. I am instructed to tell you that our path lies through the straits.”
“What straits?”
But I saw the answer in his face: the dark stains under his eyes, the weary grief.
Sickness rose in my throat. “Where Scylla dwells.”
He nodded.
“She ordered you to come that way as well?”
“She did.”
“How many did you lose?”
“Twelve,” he said. “We were not fast enough.”
How could I have forgotten who my sister was? She would never just ask a favor, always she must have a whip to drive you to her will. I could see her bragging and laughing to Minos. Circe’s a fool for mortals, I hear.
I hated her more than I ever had. It was all so cruelly done. I imagined stalking into my house, slamming the door on its great hinge. Too bad, Pasipha?. You will have to find some other fool.
But then six more men, or twelve, would die.