I wonder if her lessons will ever sink in or if they’ll forever ring through my mind in her voice, oil on water, condemning my actions without helping me stop doing the things that so annoy her. The things that apparently make me undesirable.
I’ve tried. Fates know I’ve tried.
‘Demeter, are you sure you wish for such a tightly coiled look? The fashion now is much looser,’ Cyane says from the doorway, the only space left with Mother and I both crammed into my tiny bedroom. She is the nymph ordinarily entrusted with the important and arduous task of combing my hair,and, from the way she’s worrying at the edges of her own tightly coiled curls, I assume she’s quietly livid that Mother has decided to interfere on such an important day.
Gods forbid my hair looks a mess – the universe might end. Or curse shame upon my household at the very least.
I grit my teeth as Mother’s fingers catch on another knot.
‘Loose?’ Mother sneers, as expected. ‘What would that imply about her? No, a traditional look is best. She will look beautiful but still virginal, precisely what is needed.’
‘Yes, because if I don’t look virginal how will the fine suitors know that the girl whose name literally means chastity and who has lived her entire life alone on an island is pure?’
‘None ofthattoday, Kore.’ Mother sighs again. The sound has become so common that my name feels odd without it.
Still, there’s something about hearing her sigh on a day like today that pulls at a cord in my chest. I’m disappointing her, even when I’m agreeing to the biggest thing she’s ever asked of me.
She puts the final pin in place. ‘There, you look just as beautiful as all the rumours claim.’ She holds a looking glass up and I take in her work: my thick, unruly hair pinned tight against my scalp, frizzy black strands already trying to escape. Hair aside, I try to see myself the way a stranger might, the way my future husband might – smooth olive skin and a long straight nose, thick eyebrows and hollowed cheeks. Eyes that are just a bit too big, too dark, that always look inquisitive and naive, like those you’d expect of someone named ‘little girl’.
She’s right. I’m beautiful. Of course I am. We’re goddesses. We’re all beautiful.
What I notice isn’t my beauty, it’s how defeated I look. Like I have resigned myself to my fate.
In other words, I look perfect.
‘We’ll have you a husband in no time,’ Mother chirps happily, setting the glass down. It clatters on the table a little too roughly and when she pulls her hand back I see it’s shaking. I don’t like seeing evidence of her fear that I won’t get a good match. Especially when I’m terrified of getting one at all.
I tug at the ridiculous dress Mother has forced me into: a monstrosity of lilac silk, draped and twisted again and again to hint at the body on offer while obscuring enough to keep my modesty intact. It’s less an outfit than gift wrapping. It’s also too long to be practical, trailing along behind me. Considering how shallowly I’m having to breathe, I suspect it’s been designed to stop me running away.
I nearly trip down the stairs following Mother to the kitchen. Cyane stays behind to tidy up but she must have been cooking before she joined us because the kitchen is steamy – worryingly so in a house made almost entirely of wood and several twisting trees – and the smell of bread is crushing in so small a space. Normally I’m too impatient to wait for the bread to cool down, burning my fingers as I tear it into chunks, but my dress is cinching my stomach so tightly that the very thought of eating is nauseating. My fingers fumble, trying to loosen the strands that tie it all together.
Mother swats my fingers away and straightens the bow instead. ‘You should always look your best for your husband.’
What would you know? You aren’t married, I want to scream.
‘Will he always look his best for me?’ I ask instead.
Mother jumps, glancing around like an Olympian could be lurking round the corner, like she hasn’t spent the last decade weaving intricate magic to bar the uninvited from our island. ‘Don’t say things like that, Kore!’ she scolds. ‘No one will believe that a woman who talks of attraction is virginal. Do you want people to believe you’re a whore?’
‘Well.’ I feign consideration, thenaive little girlrole I slip into for self-preservation. ‘If they did then no one would want to marry me. Maybe Iwouldlike that freedom.’
Mother’s face falls and she takes my hands in hers. ‘That’s not freedom,’ she says gently. ‘Men see a reputation as an invitation.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ I say, blinking vacantly though I understand perfectly well. ‘I thought you kept me on this island to keep me away from men. But now I have to marry one? Is sex okay then, if it’s with your husband?’
‘Yes, but only then.’
‘But you weren’t married when you had me.’ I furrow my eyebrows to really drive home my confusion.Remind me of how I was conceived, Mother.
‘That was before the goddess of marriage became queen of the gods. Rivers of Hell, I might not like Hera but at least she gained power somehow. She made marriage mean something, enough to bind even her own husband.’
Gods, not Hera as an example again. How is my stepmother the shining hope of marriage? My father forced her into it and they’re both miserable.
‘Hardly,’ I snort without thinking better of it.
‘Marriage isprotection, Kore. A ring on your finger binds you to one man and that’s all the gods respect.’
‘Another man’s property?’ I sneer. I can’t stop myself now that I’ve started.
