‘Do you not get cold, Autochthe?’
‘Yes, but our skin is thick and we enjoy our lives of sensation.’
I ponder this. ‘How are your fellows?’
‘They are well.’
‘You spoke of … of sisters and mothers and daughters?’
‘Yes.’
‘You spoke of lovers?’
‘Yes.’ I am silent a while. Then Autochthe speaks again. ‘There are many things that live in forests, among the one-eyed wild things, that do not live among mortals and men.’
‘But … do they … those things … not get lonely? Or cold? Do they not mind being …’ I struggle for articulation, ‘never seen? Never spoken of?’
Autochthe makes a quick, cracking sound and I realize she is laughing. It is loosed and unselfconscious. ‘We are seen! We are seen by each other and by those who want to see. For us, this is enough. Those that don’t see are blind for a reason and often violence follows in the wake of their knowledge.’
She runs on and I feel a little foolish. I have never cared about being seen, in fact I have despised it, the eyes too often belonging to predators, looming at me like wolves in the dark. But there is something about what she lays out before me. I catch a taste of it on the breeze as we run and what it stirs is terrifyingly strange but sweetly familiar. The flavour of an alternative.
She turns right and the slope of the forest suddenly dips sharply before us, the sea and open sky drawn into view from behind the curtain of trees. She stops and I clamber down; I do not want her to have to leave the comforting cover of the forest. She has done so much already.
‘Thank you, Autochthe.’
‘I am told that the second repayment waits at the shore.’
‘You are a good friend.’
She dips her head and places her large hand across my chest. My heart beats a few moments. She says, ‘You should leave your cloak behind. You will be cold when you return.’
I nod. I appreciate her kindness. I appreciate herwhen. Another might have saidif.
She steps back and is swallowed by the trees.
I hasten to the shore, slipping slightly on the loose shale and sand. I feel it in the mutable ground beneath my feet; I am not wanted here.
I do not care.
I remember standing on the rocks with my grandmother as a child feeling abject horror at the thought of such vast bellows. I had so striven in my avoidance of this place that I had never dreamed that I might one day intentionally enter the abyss. I half laugh at my insanity. But she always made me my maddest self. My freest, fullest self. I shuck off my sandals and step into the surf. At once it teems and pools around me, white-topped waves whispering to each other, rearing and shying and bucking away from me. They flee my feet and as the water parts before me something emerges.
It is absurd to recognize a dolphin, but I do recognize her. She is the one Amphitrite had sat astride, almost ten years ago to the day.
I do not understand her language of clicks and squeaks, but I do not need to. The sleek body shines silver as the moon moves through clouds, across the edge of the earth. She offers me her fin and I climb atop her back, trying to position myself as Amphitrite had, all those years ago. The dolphin begins slowly, as though letting me acclimate, drawing me out and away from the shore. My legs trail through the water. It is cold and seeps through mychiton, the frigid touch of misgiving sliding up my body with it.This is ill-advised.I think of my children, alone and motherless if I do not return. But toturn back now would be to deny them the best of me. I will teach them to be brave and loyal and cunning. First, I must teach myself.
We submerge. It is as anathema as I had expected. My naiad blood prevents me from drowning as I let out the last of my air but the salt is a fire in my chest when I breathe in again. Down and down we dive. It chafes at my skin, burns my nose and my eyes and offers no respite when I am raw and flayed. Down and down. Past the bright glow of fish, flowering from plants that I have never seen and have no name for. Down and down. The murkiness swallows the light and eats us alive but the dolphin is steady. She knows these waters.
In the distance I see a shining red. For a foolish, hopeful moment, I think it is fire. But then the palace is upon us, and I have never seen anything so warm in tone look so cold. It exists in dips and arches, gaps and holes, nooks and crannies. It is full, full of Nereids and other creatures of the deep, things with tentacles and scales and fins as sharp as their teeth – but all is silence. All is muted, livid and heavy, as though dark wine has muddled my senses. For a moment I fear that I will not be able to speak down here, that I won’t be able to plead my case.
I climb off the dolphin and say, ‘Thank you, friend,’ and my voice is there. Hoarse and rounded, each word saturated, but it is there. She swims away and I think she is leaving me but after a few paces she turns back to look, and I see that she intends me to follow. Ignoring the glaring, hostile eyes of many, I do so.
We swim around the side of the palace and through an archway framed with pearls and shells, weaving in and outof coral megaliths. I am so turned around that I know I don’t have a hope of leaving this place without a guide. I swim closer to the dolphin.
Eventually we turn a corner and I see a familiar flash of bone-white skin, hair so closely matched with the surrounding coral that her face is even more luminous here, in this shadowy half-light.
‘It is you,’ says Amphitrite. ‘You came.’
It has been ten years, but she remains unchanged and greets me with a cool surprise, as though it has been only a few days. But then she is Queen of the Sea now, she sits upon a throne of forever. ‘When Artemis summoned Delphine, I wondered …’
