More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
This man, like so many others before him, is light of foot in the way that only those committed most heavily to their terrible purpose ever are.
I'm still not entirely convinced that they ever truly believed in me, not until they were confronted with what my existence really meant for them. They simply needed something to worship. Some kind of justification for their rituals.
Call me a monster, I think. Give me a name of your own. I have been called so many things over the centuries. Sometimes I forget which names have been given and which have been taken. Monster-goddess-Photine. I am that which you say I am. Let me be the monster.
It showed the unanimity of the offerings, that they were not made only by those with something to give, but by those with much to gain.
An offering from someone who has everything is worth nothing. An offering from someone with nothing speaks for itself.
There's no name for the hunger that this second body feels, and there's no quenching it with fruit or honey, water or wine.
"Why are you still here?" I ask, after hours of hearing that same arrhythmic stone. "I need to talk to you." He pauses. "That's why I came." No-one comes here to speak to me, I think. You don't bring a sword to a conversation.
Her footsteps were light yet quick. Eager to make her way through the cave to where the trinkets were and the harmless monster lived, yet wary enough to step softly. She would have been taught to be careful, I thought. Her mother would have told her. There are monsters in the streets that spoil little girls and eat them. Tread carefully.
"You still haven't told me what you want from me," I say. I don't need to see him to know that he's grinning. "No," he agrees. "I haven't. But there's no need to hurry. I can wait until I know better what I'm asking of you."
I did not know what to do. Almost without thinking, I returned to the cave and brought out the offerings that I had piled up. I don't know why. To show those who came for her that I had somehow venerated her, perhaps. A ritual of my own. To hope that this veneration might pay tribute to her life, not her death. That I knew I had taken something valuable, or something beyond value. Something that I could not give back.
The thing about grief is that it pays no heed to the rules we have constructed for ourselves. Grief commands us to act. It demands recognition.
I wonder what language has given him away. I want to know the language he speaks when he first thinks about speaking, before he turns all his words inside out and lets me understand.
"My city has been under Greek rule for centuries," he explains. "My name is Perseus - my real name. I don't just go by a Greek name. It was given to me." A pause. I hear the clatter of metal as he sets his weapons down at last. He's worn them for longer than I would have expected in the dry heat. "Only I haven't lived in that city since I was born," he continues. "The city I was raised in, where I still live - we don't speak Greek there. I'm the only one I know whose name doesn't pass comment in Athens." The sound of dirt being moved around - I think he's sitting down, head resting against the
...more
It's easy, talking with him. I haven't spoken to anyone like this in as long as I can remember. Certainly not since I was given this body. I'm not sure whether or not this easiness is real, or whether it is a symptom of loneliness.
My mother slept alone. I crawled into her bed once, when I was small and afraid of the dark, and she sent me away. As though pretending that her loneliness was in some way a choice, and not a sentence.
Let me not see this. I am sick of talking about my suffering. I feel thick with it. My heartbeat heavy. A tangible weight.
The thing about the absence of solitude is that it makes loneliness much harder to bear. All these years of nothing and no-one, all taken away. Start again.
My mother hated my choice. Athena was a goddess of men, she said. Athena, with her armour and her battle cries, her tongue that sought to rival men's, her patronage of heroes and cities - she was barely even a goddess at all, said my mother. Barely even a woman.
I wondered how my mother could promise to keep me safe at all when she had been in so much danger all her life.
"I do remember that she was beautiful," he says, wistful. "Perhaps that's what killed her in the end." I want to tell him that I know too well the burden of being a beautiful woman in a world full of angry men, but I don't. I want to tell him a great many things, but I don't. There are things that must not be said.
He doesn't hear. If he does, then he has the grace to remain silent and let me speak, and I'm thankful for it. There are things I need to say. There are things I have to remember. I don't want him to know them. These are my memories. I need to tell myself first.
I had forgotten that he had a reason. Truthfully, I had convinced myself that he had come here for me. I had forgotten that men do not come here to talk.
"There's a princess," he answers eventually. My heart falters. There is always a girl. "Her name is Andromeda. I don't know if word of her people have reached here – her lands are at the very edge of the world." He sounds as though he's trying to speak lightly, but I know the sound of a man in love. There is no sound more dangerous, more painful.
"I bet she's beautiful," I say. I can't imagine a more fitting downfall for a girl with the audacity to be lovely. That deserves punishment, or so I'm told. "I don't know," Perseus replies. "I've never seen her. It doesn't matter." Of course it matters, I think. What else does? "But Medusa - I know you understand. I know you do. I have to help her, and I need you."
"And then I think - I realise that if she hadn't been beautiful, then I wouldn't be here at all. Zeus wouldn't have wanted her. And I think that that might be a good thing, if I weren't here. If I had never been born, and she were here instead."
