The Hymn to Dionysus

by Natasha Pulley

If anyone was going to go mad soon, it was Jason.

or not bc he’s already embracing madness

Instead he put his arm around me and pulled me close. “I’m so happy to see you,” he said against my hair.

“I was lonely.” Like we had been married for years, he took my shield for me.

In the story, they always said, don’t eat anything; don’t drink anything. If you take something, you owe something. I’d always wondered why Persephone ignored it, or forgot it, but I was starting to see. It wasn’t that she was ignoring or forgetting anything.

“Or,” I said, concentrating to keep a straight face, because I couldn’t just burst out laughing in public like a little boy; it was probably conduct unbecoming. “When you go shopping, you write down what you need and take it with you, and the writing remembers for you, and you’ll never forget the milk ever again.” “Oh, that is clever,” he admitted.

I felt like an old candle that had sat forgotten on a shelf for years, frozen into the same lumpy awkward shape, dull with dust, but now here was the fire again, and I was softening and changing and finding I didn’t have to be that cold shape forever, and the wax was turning warm and bright again. He’d burn me away altogether before long, but it was worth it.

He put his cup on the ground and held my knee instead. It felt like a glimmering half-promise that maybe there was more that would be all right too, maybe later, after more wine, after walking back up to his garden in the dark.

tehe

“Stop,” Dionysus said, not loudly, but he had stopped bulls, and it stopped knights too.

Sometimes you inherit liking people.

“You don’t know your mother, do you?” “No, lady.” “Most knights are not so fortunate,”

“There’s a witch looking for you. Tall, good-looking? Arrestingly weird voice? He’s outside.”

“So the function of the mad god is to break your mind, before your mind breaks your soul. Pharmakeia.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys.”

pleaseeeeee

Maybe he was stealing me. Gods steal people. Well, that was fine. I didn’t mind being stolen.

bro has a kidnapping kink

Under that, he was still wearing ordinary clothes, honey-grimy now, with a ribbon of what was still quite clearly Hatti embroidery around the hem. In places it winked with silver thread. Only two people in Thebes could wear Hatti embroidery.

oh shiiiiiit

“Phaidros, the dead things in your garden. He’s been courting you. Leaving you presents, things with nice pelts ready for skinning.” He looked up. “Like cats do.”

“But the triplets said that was me.” “You walked at night and they found carcasses in the morning. But did they see you kill anything?”

yeah that makes more sense tbh

I sank down on my knees and pressed my temple against his chest, trying to find his heartbeat. Nothing. No thump; no lift of his ribs.

OH GOD?!

“I know you didn’t help me,” Pentheus said, “but I think I might love you.”

so many ppl are in love w him LMAOOO

“I’m not asking you in order to make you function better, I’m asking because you’re even more openly suicidal than usual and I’m worried about you.”

yikes!!!

“Who will it be, lady?” “I was thinking of asking you.” “Oh. I don’t know anyone who could be king, everyone I know is fifteen.”

LMAOOO

I poked them gently. “Look, either you tell me, or I’ll tell everyone that your secret passion is Athenian poetry and if people want to get on your good side, they should insist, no matter your protests, on bringing you to special poetry-writing evenings where everyone gets together and talks about trochaic hexameters. And people will believe it, because you’re so sweary and pragmatic: they’ll all go, Aha, so it’s a front to hide the soft and fluffy soul within, we knew it all along, we shall henceforth communicate only in epic metaphor.”

“Me too,” he said. “Sorry?” “Phaidros. Is my name as well.

where is this going LMAO

As we left, I looked back, and I was sure the priest—sitting at the table again, the lovely knife between his hands—was crying.

are they brothers???

“They mean it’s you,” he whispered. “They think you’re the lost prince.”

okay WAIT does that mean the real however you spell his name was actually left at that temple that day and helias (also not sure if that’s how you spell his name) actually kept the baby?????? also is that why helias didn’t want to fuck him bc of incest? i’m not sure the ages makes sense tho but idk. maybe that would make sense why he was “smaller” than he was supposed to be? cuz he was actually younger? and why helias rlly made him memorize that story?

“Marriage?” said Dionysus, sharp.

oh :(

“He’ll be a good king,” said Pentheus, as if that was a normal thing to say about a person.

Worse than unwanted, the memory of that terrible row I’d had with Helios when I was nineteen came back. You’re too young! You’re too young .

yuuuuuuup

They would have said, ‘Goodness, your ward’s a bit young isn’t he,’ and all he would have had to say is, ‘Tell me about it, society is broken,’ and that would have been that—”

“I was not married to my uncle.”

yikes!

“Phaidros . . . you’re sitting here asking me if I think she’s going to kill you. This is not what a marriage should be.” “For gods’ sake, Dionysus, duty is honour.” “When you say duty is honour,” he said, “it always sounds amazingly like suffering is honour.”

“Suffering doesn’t make people good or noble. A little bit gives them perspective. A lot turns them cruel, and too much—you get a murderer or a marvel, and neither of those are really people any more.”

so true!!!

I understood. This was it, the revenge he had waited for. I’d made him hope, on that ship, that I would help, and then I’d betrayed him. This was the same.

ur KILLING ME

He didn’t do that. I didn’t understand what he did. He tilted right back from me, then got up and stepped back too. Someone coming in just at that moment would have thought I’d punched him. “No,” he said.

GOD FUCKING DAMN!!!!!

He gave me a look then that would have been strange on a grown man, but it was eerie coming from someone who had so recently been a child. It was pity. Not the patronising kind people sometimes aim at relatives who only appear when there’s free food. The kind you have for a beautiful war horse wounded past saving—something glorious and brave, and almost dead.

because we were close enough for her to kiss me and I didn’t want her to, really powerfully, involuntarily didn’t want her to,

bro is gay

She wanted Pentheus to be ruthless. Ruthless is Sown.

“I told you I’d come back for you,” he said, very soft. “Come back . . . for you. If you needed me. To help.”

I feel like there must be a word for when two people both know something but they both pretend not to know because they’re worried the other one will leave.”

so very natasha pulley coded

I thought,” I said, trying hard to say it in a straight line, “that the only reason you were being kind to me was to make it worse when you murdered me.” He lifted his eyebrow a tiny fraction. “You’re fucked up, Phaidros.”

“I’m not some boy you stole, strange one. I stole you, remember?”

“It’s release. It’s all . . . things that take you away from yourself, and into something—truer, and wilder. Some of them do that a very small way. Some of them do it entire.”

It’s not blasphemy to say there could be better things. Is it?”

bro is out here advocating for the agricultural revolution

He faltered. “Too much,” he said. I pushed him in the pool. “What sort of moron doesn’t want to make friends with the adorable birds, Dionysus? Who have you been talking to for the last thousand years and why did you put up with such a luxurious selection of dickheads? Fuck!”

“This has to be your desire, not your duty,” he said. “Things can be desire and duty,” I said.

“You can’t look back.” “You know me,” I said. “I could stand at the top for a thousand years and never look back.”

he’s not like other girls!!!!!

It’s a diplomacy pomegranate.”

“You’ve done a lot of things you weren’t supposed to for me,” he said. “It’s Ivy. My name is Ivy.”

AHHHHHHH

I paused. “And I remember something about you owing me dinner.”

“How do you expect anyone to take in the sails if there’s sodding vines growing up the—” “It’s pretty!” “You’re pretty,” I growled. “I am n—hang on,” he said, and then he looked pleased.