“But his ship sailed on,” Aglaope murmured, knowing the story by heart, but unable to keep herself from wondering at the men who had resisted her grandmother’s song. The men who had left a god behind.
“Orpheus, he was called, the man who stopped the rest of their ears with his own music. Or so your grandfather told us. Blessed by the muses, or perhaps Lord Apollo himself, to rival our gifts. And the Argo, that ship of heroes, sailed on, leaving Butes-Akheloios to the sea and our hospitality. Cowards, all, too afraid to test themselves against our rocks, when if they had succeeded, we might have sung their names for generations, granting them fame and glory beyond all imagining with our songs.”
“Orpheus,” she tasted the name, bitter on her tongue. To think if he had not stopped them, those worthy men might have managed what no other had ever done. And perhaps her mother would have been born upon fertile earth, with more than bone broth and seaweed to eat during even the leanest of days. If not for Orpheus, perhaps they might have been saved.
“Butes-Akheloios came to me with nothing but the clothes upon his back, the finest linens and softest, most supple leather for his belt. Nothing but for the seed he planted in my womb, and the love he showered upon me. Every day, I climbed the spire to sing, and he would wade into the sea or climb the tumbled rocks hunting for our supper, and every night we would feast upon one another, sated and satisfied in spirit even when our bellies still growled with hunger.”
Aglaope closed her eyes, imagining what she had never known. Longing spilled over her body like so much sea spray, leaving gooseflesh upon her skin. “It must have been glorious.”
“To know a god’s love is no small thing, for however long it might last,” Thelxiope said. “But knowing our time together would be short made it all the sweeter, for Akheloios has greater duties than plowing us, as god of the rivers and the sweetest water. And so far from his domain, he cannot linger without weakening.
“Even so, Butes begged me to sail with him, when he had finally gathered wood enough for a skiff. He begged and pleaded, promising me rich lands and food enough that I might never hunger again. But the mother’s sickness had me by then, and I knew the sea would be no friend to me. And how could I leave my mother? My grandmother, who would never survive the journey, old and tired as she was. Someone had to sing for them, and my mother’s voice had grown too hoarse to manage it, if I had gone.”
“But we might have been freed,” Aglaope said, despite her best intentions. Every time she heard the story, the truth of it ate at her insides. “We might have gone to bed each night with full bellies and kept our strength—you might have kept your voice, if you had not needed to sing for so long, and so loud, day after day, season after season.”
“Perhaps we might have been,” her grandmother agreed, her forehead furrowing slightly. “Or more likely, had I survived the sea, Demeter would have struck at me when I reached her fertile earth, sending me down to Persephone to serve her daughter in death as we had not in life.”
“We,” she grumbled. “We have done nothing at all to be punished so cruelly.”
“Hush, child,” her grandmother said, voice sharp. “You do not know what you risk, saying such things.”
“What is worse than this?” she asked. “With Circe’s falcons stealing what food we might have lived upon, and no ship in sight for moons and moons. We are starving, Grandmother, and it hurts me to watch. It hurts me to see you shrink just a little more, every day. To see Mother weaken, too, while you give me what scraps we have to eat, that I might keep my strength to sing. But I sing for no one but the witch’s woman and the seabirds who do not dare to roost upon the rocks so long as the falcons soar. And Akheloios has not come for years and years. You and mother knew his love, carried his children, but before long, I will be too old even to try.”
“You must have patience, Aglaope,” she said. “Trust in the gods, and in the fates who weave and measure our years. What will be, will be, and in the end we will see our goddess again. That is all that matters.”
“What matters is that the gods send us a ship,” she said. “And if the gods ever show us kindness enough that Akheloios comes to bed me, I will not refuse when he begs me to follow him across the sea. I will sail away from here, and happily.”
“Perhaps you will,” Thelxiope said quietly. “I only hope that for your sake, what waits for you beyond this island is everything that you have dreamed it to be.”
But Aglaope did not need it to be everything. She only needed it to be.
* * *
II
“Sing, Siren, sing until your voice is hoarse and your throat is raw, but you will never have another ship so long as my lady lives! Soon enough, you’ll join Chrysomallo’s shade, and the gods will curse you for the desecration you have wrought, time and time again, upon the bodies of the dead.”
Aglaope ignored the taunts, just as she had ignored the falcon circling above and threatening to dive upon her head, and the movement of the small ship rising and falling upon the waves just far enough away—the twist of anger and rage upon the woman’s features, the anguish and the pain in every jerk and sweep of the oars. Aglaope was humming still, warming her voice to keep from straining it with song. But soon enough her singing would drown out the woman’s spiteful calls.
“Every ship that comes to our shores, our mistress keeps, turning the men to fine, juicy pigs, sheep, and goats, that we might feast! All the wine in their holds, all the supplies they carry, we take, and never have we eaten so well as we do now—falling asleep with bellies so full they ache.”
Aglaope closed her eyes, ignoring the pang of hunger, the growl of her empty stomach. She might have felt badly for the woman’s loss if not for her boasting and taunts. She could too-well imagine how they indulged on their lush, fertile island. And of course Circe and her women would never fall so low as to eat the flesh of men—only fine, fat beasts, while Aglaope and her mother and grandmother had been driven to devour putrid, bloated corpses, with nothing but the ground dust of their dry, splintered bones to flavor their more and more brackish water. As if Aglaope would have ever chosen to eat the half-rotten flesh of any body, had she another choice. As if she did not long for good food, for salted fish and cheese and fruits, like any other.
“And what will you do, Siren, if the rains do not come? With no ships to bring you water and wine? Where is your river god, your Akheloios, to quench your thirst? My lady Circe will hold him hostage, too, if he dares to pass her by, just as she holds the great Odysseus, grandson of Autolycus, himself a son of fleet-footed Hermes.”