I keep my face bland, calm, but Phineus still glances between us as if he can see the bloom that lives there, feeding off the private joke. He nods reluctantly but does not leave. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. I feel the same distance that yawns between my mother and myself.
‘I wish it did not have to be so. We would have had a nice life, you and I,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘I – I wish—’
‘I know,’ I say, cutting him off. ‘I know.’ I fish around in my pocket and pull out the small wooden hippo that I carry still. I love him for his wishes and gestures. Even if they are tokens only. But he smiles and wraps his large hand around mine, squeezing once before he leaves.
When he is out of earshot, Ceto says, ‘Your mother did a clever thing, tying her life to your future. It would deter most people from trying to find an alternative path for you.’
The way she saysmost peopletightens my shoulders.
‘You would gladly see my mother dead and your sister on the throne next to Poseidon’s, I suppose?’
She shrugs and it is response enough.
‘And you do not worry for your sister? Taking the place of Poseidon’s wife?’
‘I think … I think that she is better suited to such a life.’
The thought suddenly flares, loathsome and unwanted, that all this suggesting that we, together, might set me free from a dangerous marriage might have less to do with care for me than I have been led to believe. The crown was Amphitrite’s first.
‘Tell me about your sisters. You never speak of them.’
Her face closes, tight and flat.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Well … there are fifty of you?’
‘Yes?’
‘But you are not … you do not seem attached to each other?’
‘There are fifty of us,’ she shrugs again. ‘That would be a great deal of attachment.’
‘But … you do not confide in each other? You are not friends?’
‘Not really.’
She does not want to talk about it, and I do not want to push it further.And the why does not matter.I do not wish to marry the sea god. And she does not wish it for me. She has experience with oaths, with the gaps and limitations. I need her help.Her motives are irrelevant.I repeat this to myself over and over, use it to drown out the memory of the small breath that sighed from her lips as I stroked her hair.We are both lonely. And we want the same thing. That is all.
‘Meda?’
My eyes open.
‘Are you well?’
My eyes close again. My head rests on my arms on the banks, the lower half of my body is submerged. I am shivering slightly. Spring is fragrant in the air around us. The breeze is cool, but not enough that I should be cold. I have been this way for some time, having declined to race with Ceto and my grandmother. Achiroe’s hands feel my forehead, run over my shoulders and stop at my lower back.
‘What is it, mylittle queen?’
‘I feel strange.’ I straighten with some effort and gesture to my abdomen. A building tightness started last night and has not abated. I am heavy with fatigue, my limbs are waterlogged and unfamiliar.
‘What?’ Ceto asks. ‘What is it? What is wrong with her?’ Her voice is pinched and high.
My grandmother’s face clouds. She does not speak for a moment. And then her words, thudding, sinking like stones around us, ‘I … I believe that her time is near.’
