‘No. You should not have.’ He sounds so bored, so uninterested, that when he pulls her apart, it takes several moments for me to understand what has happened.
He does it easily, for what is she to him but a flapping butterfly? He tears at her and she separates. Arms wrenched out of sockets, skin torn like silk. Her chest is split unevenly into three and he holds her head, dangling it absurdly above the rest of her body, as though teasing her neck with the promise of a reunion. She hangs in pieces that stay in place; they do not crumple in her throne. She lives still, disconnected, choking on blood that gushes and stains the blue of herkalasiris, turning it violet. It pools in her dismembered lap and turns the sand to mire. I think of the vicious slits alongbulls’ necks, their blood slurrying the banks of the Nile as we beseeched the gods for a good year. My mind is heavy and slow, a kind of madness descending, blanket like, to swaddle me against the plunging sickness that lives beyond anguish.
My mother gurgles. It sounds like my name but I cannot know for sure. Some of her women hurl vomit into the sand. Others slump into unconsciousness. My father stains his robes with brown. I feel Ceto at my back, always at my back, keeping me upright, but today I do not need her. I am locked and hard packed as the desert sand and I cannot move.
‘Cassiopeia, Queen of Aethiopia. For your crime of hubris I sentence you to yield for eternity.’ Poseidon flicks his wrist and my mother spins in the air, her blood arcing bizarrely as the pieces of her hold their form. Now she hangs, upside down, raining gore. ‘For your dreams, I will give you to the stars.’ Poseidon’s voice rings across the coast. Then the pieces of her are bright and shining, she is on fire, the smell of her burning flesh hot in my nostrils and I cannot even cover my face against it. I feel as though I too am torn, I too am rent from my heart and stomach, my limbs separate and heavy. But I am bound in my body, so bound and frozen, my muscles tight with the force of what I am being made to watch bearing down on me, the blanket of madness wrapped tight around me.
My mother opens her mouth to scream but all her cries run red.
‘You will hang like this, in the skies, forever. You will burn like this, in the skies, forever. But do not fear,’ his words are taut with malicious laughter, ‘I will not take your throne.’
She looks at me. And her eyes, bloodied and alight, will be forever blazed in my memory.
Then she is gone.
Inside, I am screaming. Inside, I tear at my face, my hair, I rage at her and for her but I cannot raise my hands to perform such grief. She would not want me discomposed. And the world is blurred and strange. I sway where I stand but do not fall.
Poseidon turns to Ceto now with an almost paternalistic expression. He says, ‘Now, Ceto,’ as though she is his child, his pet, and her scolding and discipline is his responsibility. ‘You have your wish. Your sister will be queen. But I speak with the tongue of Horkos, he who glories in repercussions, and you broke your oath.’ He sighs, considering. ‘You will serve me still. Not as before, but unwaveringly.’ He smiles again. Ceto gasps and stumbles, pulled from my side once more. I am hollow, heaving great breaths, choking on my kindling mother in my throat.
‘The princess’s face is a challenge,’ the sea god continues, reaching out to stroke Amphitrite’s hair without looking at her, ‘and we cannot allow challenges. But she is abundant. And I would have the Cetus feast before her bondage.’
Slowly, so slowly, I raise my head to meet Ceto’s eyes.
I cannot feel the horror, numb as I am, but she feels it for me. I see the awful realization in her face. Through the haze of my grief, understanding comes with mocking clarity. Who were we to think we might outmanoeuvre a god? My heart slows. It is trying to distort time, it is trying to stay with her longer. It does not wish to return to me. I will not keep it as safe, defend it as loyally as she has.
What comes next comes in fragmented shards, disparate and twisting.
Ceto is pleading, begging at her master’s feet. She hasloved him and hated him, as she has loved and hated being the Cetus, and it is this that brings me back to my body; knowing that she will live forever, perpetually hating, if this is to be how the end is delivered.
‘I have spent almost six years at her side, do not bid me do this.’ The words are choked and her eyes glisten impossibly. I have seen her kneel for no one but me, beg for no one else. The sight of her there, in the ground beneath him, wrecks me so entirely that I wonder how death could possibly be worse. Amphitrite dives with her dolphin beneath the surf. She has watched it all impassively, but I have seen her wind her bright hair round and round her pale slender wrists and know that she does not wish to see any more.
Poseidon is laughing at my worm at his feet. ‘I have seen you shatter ships! You have grown soft on land. This will make you strong again.’ The sea god barks my father’s name and my father scrambles to respond, rushing to me, never meeting my eyes. Ceto flies at us then, screaming my name, reaching for me, drawing her coral knives to cut my father’s hands from where he drags me by my arms, only to be pulled back, shying and bucking like a horse on some invisible rein. And now I find my fight, in reaching for her I find it. I cannot bear to see her restrained, I cannot let myself be taken from her like this. She will never recover, never be free of it, and I cannot be the reason for her shackles. Our fingers graze but my father is stronger than me, so much stronger than I realized, and he hauls me away, in spite of my kicking, thrashing limbs.
‘Now, now, Ceto,’ Poseidon chides. ‘You will live so long that soon six years will mean a moment. And she will bedelicious.’ I do not know if Ceto hears him. She screams my name still.Meda, Meda, Meda.
Cepheus drags me down the coast to the cape. His men fetch rope to bind me with.
His priest, whom he travels with, murmurs prayers. I do not know what for or who to. The heavens are empty, the gods are here. I fancy I see them, three shapes silhouetted against the clifftop, eyes upon us, bearing witness but not the weight of experience, and so still full of light. I writhe and the men hold me down. My father ties knots at my feet and wrists, arms behind my back. He still does not meet my gaze. I will not allow this. He will not do this blindly. He will see. I will make him.
‘And so it is to be your hand, is it, Father?’
He says nothing.
‘You used to tell me stories. You used to make us laugh while Mama did my hair.’
His face flickers but he remains silent, hands working over the knots.
‘I am worth your kingdom, but your throne is still worth more.’
Still nothing and I snarl. I will have from him what I want.
‘Phineus was twice the man you are and Cassiopeia was twice the king!’
I have him. He faces me at last.
‘I did not want any of it,’ he hisses. He smells of piss and shit and sweat and drink. ‘But you and your mother. You could not be contained.’
‘I did not want any of it either! The world wantedmeand you have never protected me!’
