The Hymn to Dionysus

by Natasha Pulley

When someone is that calm in a crisis, either they don’t know what’s happening, or you don’t.

It was such a small thing, but somewhere, behind the world, something went in a great ledger, and something mighty took notice.

He sounded like that ash-glow looked; like the funeral pyre of kingdoms.

I don’t know when it started—maybe even as I began to panic on that beach—but after a while, I noticed that whenever my heartbeat was loud, it sounded like Where are you, where are you, where are you.

So some smart-arse noticed that we do that too and started calling us the parthenai, which means “the virgins.” You’ll hear it every time Theban soldiers meet Athenian soldiers. Oi oi, watch out lads, the virgins are coming. As I say, they’re much improved by being on fire.

I was relieved, because when you have to make a group of children murder some people who’ve done nothing to them, the best way for them to be is excited.

insane!

It is not a proper story unless everyone murders each other at the end.

“You’re family.” She smiled Helios’s smile. “Go and find your nephew, Heliades.”

that’s a little yikes

I was tired, but being able to spite an annoying person is an amazing source of energy.

He looked the way lighthouses look on a churning sea. Part of me said: You’re supposed to avoid lighthouses.

1) ofmd reference 2) the kingdoms reference

I couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at me square for whole seconds at a time. Helios, probably; in bed.

okay i guess y’all did fuck?

“So he should. He was there from the start, I can’t believe he isn’t more drunk,” Dionysus said cheerfully.

PLEASE

There was a brief negotiation in which he suggested we hold hands and I explained that I would rather walk into a furnace and explode, thank you, and so as a compromise, he tied our wrists together.

“you’re mine now. You’re subject to no curses but mine.”

“It’s going to eat my pedigree fish, isn’t it,” the Queen sighed. “But now you’ve got a fun bird,” I offered. “I suppose.” “Pedigree fish,” I echoed, hearing it properly. She gave me a severe stare. “Are you making fun of my fish, Sown?”

“Do you ever feel like your whole life happened to you in languages you don’t speak any more?”

It’s hard not to like someone who befriends passing tortoises.

Humans are weird animals; partly we’re wild, and partly we are clockwork. Unholy devices, all of us—mechanisms bolted onto bone.”

“You know speaking truth to power is very rarely an ingredient for longevity.”

not daydreaming about starting an orphanage.

pls!

“If you try to give Hades your life whilst it still belongs to me, the Ferryman will not take you. You will wait on the Black Shore until I come for you, and I bolt your soul back into your body, and it will not matter if your body was burned at a stake by the sea: you will become a puddle of sentient ash, until I say you can go.”

DAMN

There are plenty of others. Stories. Dancing. Masks.” A dry wind moved his veil, ghosting it against one of side of his face. “And the trance of prophets, and the bees,

when he’s literally given you a bee and was hosting a mask party just the other day!

It had a been an uncanny thing when the idea had soaked into me enough that one morning, I looked out at the sky and the sea and thought: Yes. That’s blue.

“You didn’t say he was a good thing, just that he’s a true thing.” “Yes,” he said, and looked away again. He wasn’t, I noticed suddenly, drinking.

poor baby hates being the mad god? poor little meow meow

For such a tall man, he took up almost no space. “Maybe he’s like anyone, maybe he’s just visiting. Maybe he’s trying to make sure some idiot doesn’t commit suicide by tyrant.”

ooop

I don’t think you could make her think she’s a swarm of bees, or whatever it is you normally do to people who vex you, before she has you shot. So just—be careful.” “It’s squirrels,” he said seriously, “I really like squirrels; it’s because they have tiny hands and their tails are silly.”

I was still caught up in the novelty of meeting an adult who liked to play and joke and who didn’t seem to worry at all about his dignity—and the strangest thing was that he wasn’t missing dignity. He had plenty, but it was like quicksilver instead of armour. You couldn’t put a dent in it.

love this sm. also me fr

“Gods, Phaidros. If the knighting ever falls through, the witching is waiting.”

I kissed him through it, just a scratch against his cheek, playing really, but he went still.

oop!

I stared at Dionysus with what felt like gravel in my throat. Of course it was him.

yeah man. it was pretty obvious

Someone coming for you on a revenge quest is much better than nobody coming at all.

awwwwww

“Walk you home?” Dionysus rounded off. All good things kill you, in the end. “Yes please, sir,” I said.

Do you know about friends? It’s when you keep talking to another person for a good while but neither of you sets the other one on fire.” I almost laughed, because that was a two-sided joke if there ever was one, given that he assuredly would be setting me on fire soon. “I see, I see. And what’s the strategic function of this?” “It’s operationally redundant,” he said, just as seriously, “but good for morale.”

“He has—cursed you. He curses soldiers. He makes you think normal people are enemies, at night. We have seen this curse at home. We watch, because we want to make sure you do not kill us.” I stepped back without meaning to. “What?” He glanced at his brothers again. “And—this last couple of days . . . you’ve been killing other things. In the garden.”

oh yikes!!!

and then, incredibly, the hiss of the paintbrush as a man worked brilliant colours into the glaze of a new mask at a tiny table he’d set up outside his pottery shop.

i feel like some of this hearing is like way more than a normal person

And it wasn’t right to notice how the light was turning him gold down one side, or how fragile-strong his collarbones looked, or how it would be if I could put my head on his shoulder.

“You’re a good witch,” I said at last. He rested his head on his hand, looking far too pleased with the compliment for someone who was going to murder me soon. “All flowers, cakes, and other tokens of adoration gratefully accepted at the end of the show.”

So I taught him some proper knots, and then he tied me to the bed;

kinky!

I was on a hundred and fifty-nine when, opposite me, the cupboard door opened and someone climbed out, monstrous in the bull mask.

oh god

So, when some Hatti cavalryman rode screaming at you, you didn’t freeze, which is normal; you went, oh fuck, what if they give me the Cheese of Shame?”

I didn’t take them, because of what he had just said about his vow, but he gave me an impatient look then, like I was being cruel, and took mine.

“For sure, knight: why would I have been afraid when I think it was fifty-fifty that you almost didn’t shout. I think you almost lay there while he tore you apart. Never did a witch struggle more to keep a healthy person alive, Phaidros, I swear it.”

Me, he’d been frightened for me, and that had been real fear, the way he’d gone so cold; it wasn’t soldierly irritation that I’d been careless, nor witching. He cared what happened to me. To me.

mmhmm

Because he was the one who needed to kill me,

just shaking my head over here

“Good, keep doing that. I don’t think he’s ever met anyone who doesn’t pretend to like him before. He keeps talking about you.”

i bet he has a cruuuuush

The little knights seemed happy to have me back, even Feral Jason once I’d given him a dead mouse to feed his snakes-for-hair and pretended that looking at him had turned me to stone,

i am quite obsessed with him

Things had seemed a bit too much earlier, but sometimes what you need to remember is that everything is fine as long as you aren’t currently on fire.

“We’ll see, sir. Gods can’t die,” I said, and slit his throat.

“No, I mean too old for men. I should be on the marriage register.”

lmao

A minnow of a thought said: Blue. Dionysus tries to make you laugh, and you have this deep-down sense that she needs to laugh sometimes, and that’s . . . blue.