‘I did not make them out loud but I made them.’
I kiss her before she can say more things that break my heart. Her lips meet mine in desperation, and my mouth opens wider as she seeks a solution along my tongue.
‘I will survive him,’ I whisper into her mouth. ‘If you would maim and kill for me then I will survive for you.’
She does not respond. Only crushes her mouth to mine until my lips are bruised and swollen.
I scoop her close and her legs wrap around my waist. My palms spread across her thighs and higher, are secure on the lean muscle and I dig my fingers in marking her skin. They will remain tomorrow when she fulfils her oath, she will feel them and know that we are still to each other what we have been. She will see me scraping and kneeling in years to come, she will see me smothered and so I would have her know me now, solid and upright, breathing in deep breaths of her.
I dig my nails again and she whimpers, pressing her heat to my damp abdomen, so at odds with her cool skin and the tepid water. She nips at my teeth, wild and frenzied, and I half swim, half wade to the sandy ring that encircles the lagoon. She pales the golden sand with her luminescence and I forcibly remember how she looked that first day, all those years ago, when she had spent so long among cold and trenches. Now she is rich and dark, a copper and bronze platter where I wait to dine. These are not the days of the previous summer, our early, careful exploration, a gentle dance of listening and responding. We are learned in each other now and our hands claw at each other. Ceto makes a sound that is ripe and syrupy as a fig, part desire, part beseeching; I have never eaten the lotus fruit but I believe it tastes like that sound.
I undress her. My nose and lips follow her hem, skimming up her calves, knees, thighs and then beginning again at her ribs, my tongue reaching out to taste the salt between the swell of her breasts. I nip at her, roll the hard, swelling buds between my lips and nip again. The gentler I am, barely scraping, the wilder her hips twist and buck. I move between her mouth and nipples, lavishing them both with attention. Her keening voice is sweet as honey, thick as milk and Iexperience a thousand little deaths, there above her. Nothing can be so absolute as the suspension of her pleasure.
She scrabbles at mykalasiris, dragging it over my head, it catches on the voluminous cloud of my hair and our tears become laughter, breathless, at our madness. Her eyes are dusk as they stroke my body like a physical touch. It turns the blaze of my hunger to furnace and forge; I will make and unmake her. My tongue keeps contact with her skin, moves through her dark brush and does not pause before her glistening core. I draw ecstasy from her body and my name from her mouth. I lap at her like a serpent tasting the air and scenting the day, teasing her open wider and wider. I suckle at her, my lips puckered loose, the seal and release light enough to feel like kissing. Her legs fall apart and I know by the flush beneath the pigment of her flesh that she is close. I cannot be so far away for this moment. What is it, if I am not there to witness? I rise up and her moan is hoarse when I stop.
‘Please, Meda, please let me, please let me.’ The rhythm of her chant matches the thrumming of my blood.
I watch her face as I begin to stroke her, featherlight fingers gliding easily over her wetness.
‘Meda, my Meda.’ She is desperate. I increase the pace but not the pressure. I lean in and claim her mouth once more. As my tongue slides across hers I imitate the action below, and stroke inside her. She releases a fractured cry against my mouth. She is cresting and the break will be immense. She reaches for me, for more. I usually seek to dominate her here; there is no greater joy for me than seeing her, my soft, sweet worm, my Ceto, rapturous at the mercy of my ministrations. But there is too much want between us now. When her nails score desire down my body and find their way betweenmy legs, I do not pin her arms above her head as I might have. Our gazes lock. She is nearer to her apex, but watching her, with her deft fingers pressing and pinching, I am not far behind.
It comes and she is wracked with tremors. It endures, as does she, each wave and surge. She seeks air and I give her mine. All the while her eyes hold me still, and I do not look away as she inspects her fingers where they have paused between my thighs. Salty divinity has eased my bleeding to a thin crimson, almost pink, as though I am dyed by the lagoon. She dips her fingers into herself and mixes the flowing ichor of her pleasure with my blood. Our bodies swear oaths that we do not dare voice. We moan in harmony, the ritual of her gesture shuddering through me. For a long while we are a sermon of kisses. We whisper to each other, everything and nothing, answers to long-ago questions.Good girl, I tell her,such a good girl. She becomes pliant and open again, a different kind of thirst, and tugs me up and over her. She wriggles and pushes until she is beneath me, head cradled between my thighs, mouth open and begging.
I hesitate, scared of my weight on her, feeling the beginnings of some new and foreign shame, but she does not allow me to inspect it too closely. She runs her fingers through the hair that hovers just above her nose and pulls me to her, resting her palms on the mounds of my rear, kneading gently. She devours me and watches as she does so. Blood beads at her chin when she takes a breath and my Ceto and the Cetus become one, feral and savage and ravenous. Her tongue is flat, it ripples against me, seeking hidden places, leaving no corner of pleasure ignored. She is relentless and my wordless cries are hushed, caught in my throat. My convulsions are a rush,all at once and total, they bunch and release with such force that I am sent to the stars. They wish me well as I float there, promise they will see me soon as I return to earth, past the gods to whom I pay no attention, back to the only sanctity I know.
We hold each other close. ‘Thank you,’ she murmurs.
‘Thank you for all of it,’ I reply.
Dusk descends with desire, but it is not over. We will slide into the salt, soft blooded, and begin again. It is not over. Not yet.
In my father’s language we call it the Erythraean Sea, the Red Sea. It is not red, it is not even pink like the salt lagoon, but it is occasionally muddied with silt and becomes a kind of cinnamon, which is supposed to count for something. My mother’s people call it the Sea of Reeds. I should prefer this. It is honest and the reeds remind me of my grandmother. But I admire the not-quite redness of the Erythraean Sea. It declares itself one thing and it is believed.
We pack up and move out the next morning. It is my first time travelling on horseback like this. I have trotted around the palace grounds but never so long or with such a convoy. The Lord Poseidon sends two white mares, gifts for Ceto and me. My mother coos over his generosity and my father delights to know that they will be his to stable if the day of judgement goes as is expected. But I am nervous of these large, skittish creatures and they are nervous of me. Their hooves seem made of stone and their teeth look as though they could crush my arm where they protrude from their mouths. I am stiff and awkward on their backs. I clutch my hippos in my pocket and think of how I prefer the river horses, despite their far worse reputation.
Before we leave, I must say goodbye to my grandmother; I dread this most of all. When she embraces me, I try to drink the smell of her, earth and soil and violets and fresh, clear river water. She twines blue lilies in my hair and in Ceto’s, stroking the salt from my face.
‘I will see you again.’
But for the first time in my life, I do not believe her. She cannot journey into the sea. She can’t stray too far from her father’s river. Her godhood is a golden fetter about her neck; she is dazzling and lovely and kept here. I clutch her again.
All around is the opposite of my internal distress, with excited scrambling and anticipation of what is to come. The court cannot believe its good luck. They had been so sure of my failure and consigned me to the sympathetic condescension they reserved for disappointments, outcasts and spinsters. But now my time has come. Those not accompanying in my mother and father’s retinue stay to prepare the palace for the bounty that will surely flood their halls when their princess is named Queen of the Sea. Given that, should this not occur, the price is the life of their queen, I expect more anxiety. But in all the years they have doubted my body, my health and my womanhood, they have never doubted my beauty.
I cry all that first day. First Phineus and now my grandmother, I feel fragmented and scattered, lost without her steady nurture.Will everyone and everything that is mine, the meagre mine-ness that exists, all be taken?
I try to make the most of my nights with Ceto. It is awkward and fumbling in the thin tents and we are so surrounded, but we work to find laughter here. It is as if this is our first time again. I do not act as if it will be the last time. I make her tell me of the Coral Kingdom, of its winding,watery corridors and jagged crannies where we might secret away and be ourselves again. Ceto answers me fully, teases my attempts at future planning. But I notice the flatness returning to her eyes, the dullness I had sworn to banish for good, and worry that each lingering embrace is a goodbye.
My mother dresses me herself, early on the morning of the judgement. She sends my attendants and Ceto away and I let her, though Ceto lingers just outside the tent. I do not protest. I will not get this time with my mother again.I will be Queen of the Sea and my mother will live.I can sense her uncertainty. She does not know what to do with this woman before her. I am almost twenty-two. This is not how she imagined it would be, but she will not give up. I take pity on her and sit against her knees, like the old days, as she brushes, combs, oils and braids my hair.
There is silence for a while and then she says, haltingly, ‘I hope – I hope you can understand.’
‘Understand, Mama?’
She struggles. She is good at politicking, but she is not good at this. ‘Why I – fought so hard. For this.’
I remember her raging at my grandmother. I remember her muted lessons, behind the doors of her apartments with her women. I remember her stroking my hair as I cried into my pillow after Phineus laughed at my presumption of power. ‘You want to give me the world. Or at least, more of it than you have had.’
‘Yes. Exactly.’ She sags in relief against me and I am surprised by it. It occurs to me now that our years of distance may not have been entirely born from her disappointment. She has been afraid that I hated her. She called for me less and less until, one day, not at all, but perhaps only becauseshe sought to avoid my rejection. I think of Phineus and the bilious regret that I will live with, always. She finishes my hair and stands me up to add my jewellery – silver. Always silver.
