‘Not ambitious? How quiet he must have been! But no – I have heard tale of how Aethiopia played host to everyone from the Kings of Kerma to even my father.’
She chewed her words. He so rarely asked her about her home, her childhood, and she had forgotten how to speak of them. ‘He enjoyed courting favours. But he was not one for alliances. The ambition was all my mother’s.’ She had not called hermotherand so this was easier to say than she had expected.
‘Oh yes, ofcourse!’ His remembrance of a bard’s songs and poet’s stories weighted the last word, but she did not bother to correct him. ‘Well, I promised him one of our sons as an heir. I will teach our boy ambition and he will teach his grandfather and Aethiopia will be a worthy ally.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘It is strange, such a prosperous land with such a meagre brood. You had no brothers or sisters at all?’
‘No. None.’
‘And your father? He had no others that could inherit?’
She hesitated. ‘Yes, he had a brother, my lord.’ Another pause. ‘We were to be married.’
‘Oh?’ He was interested then and turned to see her properly. ‘What happened? Why weren’t you married?’
She gave a little sigh. ‘It was my destiny to marry you, my lord.’
He liked it when she said things like that. He fancied her very much in love with him and here, see, here was the proof. He gathered her to him then, mouth and hands taking their fill of her breasts before flipping her round and eagerly entering her from behind, as he preferred. He groaned at the ease of it, the smooth slide. He had heard of such things of course, from other boys and slave girls, the sweet dew of a woman satisfied. He had assumed that such things were not always the case or else that such wanton ways were anathema to his queen, so unsexed and chaste. But now he puffed with pride as he pushed and pulled. She was tight and wet around him, how perfect she felt, how wonderful it would be to fill her with sons, how masterful he was, to have shown her this wonder of her body.
Perseus laughed to himself as he climaxed, thrusting into her, and did not see the stoppered jar of pressed olive oil that she slid out of sight, beneath their bedding.
The queen was bleeding again and, on such nights, she saw fit to leave the palace. Her husband was not a bad-tempered man, but the building of his palace and its fortress had ground to a halt and, once met with the news that she still did not carry his son, he would become insufferably self-pitying. Her placid face had its limit. She would leave him to his mother to soothe. When he would whine that perhaps he had been foolish, in marrying one so close to his age, the dowager would assure him that a wise and dignifiedqueen was better than anynymphaehe might have found. When the king would turn to his mother and whisper, in hushed concern, that twenty-two was old, very old, for a woman to start bearing children, she would remind her son that his wife’s godhood was plain for all to see and that, by the standards of a naiad, she was anymphaestill. The queen was grateful for her mother-in-law’s patience. If she was to be as her own mother, it was unlikely that she would be so indulgent.
She left the palace compound and descended its hills, following the path lit by the moonlight, to the forest. She had grown to love this forest, in the months that she had lived here, and had taken to walking it when she bled. She had never seen such a forest before, they were not so dense and green in her homeland. Within it she would find wild saffron to make tea that soothed the cramping and the sickness, she would find sweet-smelling flowers that brushed up against memories, she would find the strength to keep on. The thicket above her head dappled the light as she entered, keeping to the path. She could hear the trilling of the night birds. Here they spoke in a language she almost understood. Some of them would soon pass over her old home and offer to take messages to her grandmother. There, in their bright focus, she found the beginnings of healing. The king had plans to cut this forest down, in order to expand his fortress. When she would emerge from behind the walls of her secrets and hear him discussing such plans, she almost set to scheming and dissuasion. But then the ennui would seize her again and she would return to working her body without working her mind.
She took a moment on this walk, as she did every walkwhen she bled, to find a shallow, natural pool to bathe in. She stripped and stood in it and felt a returning to herself. It was not like river bathing at home, not even close, but seeing a few droplets of her blood in the water cluster then fan, billowing like herchitonon her wedding day, heartened her, somehow. She felt cleansed, as though, with each bleed, each time she made this journey, some of the worst of what tore at her flowed out of her body in crimson rivulets, only to be replaced by whatever powered this pool. She tipped her face to the moon, just beginning to wane, and imagined an easing, like the second day of bleeding, where the cramps had lessened. They had not gone, they never really went, not until it was over, but she could withstand them. She was grateful for that at least, and pitied the stars with a ferocity that closed her eyes, as she imagined the perpetual agony of burning. Her body embraced and ate itself, like the ouroboros in the stories north of her homeland. All was a cycle.
She did not know she had company until a voice said, ‘You are the queen.’
She snatched for her dress and stumbled, fearing hands and breath and teeth furred with detritus. She pulled it on before facing the newcomer, who was not immediately easy to see in the gloom. The grey-green of her skin seemed part of the forest and she stood tall, much taller than the queen herself, built like a spruce, though her limbs had a litheness, despite their heft. Matted brown hair knotted about her shoulders, hanging over her breasts. She was entirely naked, but the queen felt no discomfort.
She had one eye. A Cyclops.
They stared at each other. After a moment, the queenrealized that the Cyclops was waiting for a response. ‘Oh. Yes. I am.’
The Cyclops lowered her head. ‘I heard that you walked this way some nights. I wish to speak with you.’
‘Speak? With me?’
‘Yes.’
The queen was bemused. ‘I did not know that Cyclopes were creatures of civility. I was taught that you dine first and discuss later.’
‘And yet, you do not run from me.’
‘I am sure you could outrun me.’
‘Still,’ the Cyclops sat abruptly, splashing her large feet into the pool, ‘most mortals try.’
The queen backed away to the opposite edge and sat slowly. ‘I have seen worse monsters.’
The Cyclops looked intrigued. ‘Oh?’
‘Men. And gods.’
‘Ah.’
