Page 104 of This Divine Revelry

‘What is it?’ I demand.

‘He might be volatile, Ariadne. He might say things he does not truly mean. Might hurt your feelings or wound your heart without intending to, so please just … know that nothing he says or does right now is personal. His reality has altered. That includes all of us and even his own thoughts. He’s suffering.’

It no longer scares me to be within the ship. Not after facing Theseus in my own home. And not after being held captive within another.

I find Dionysus in his quarters.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask – and oh, how many times have I entered a room with such a question on my tongue? It is almost a relief to ask once more – even if it is softer this time.

Shards of smashed amphorae lie scattered across the floor and Dionysus appears to be tucking them into the cracks between the wooden walls.

‘They’re made of clay,’ he says. ‘A natural insulator against my father’s lightning. So I’m creating a safe room.’

I reach for a shard. It does not seem the worst idea to create a place where he does not have to fear an attack. I tuck it into a nook in the wall.

He looks at me like the world suddenly weighs a little less, or as though he might have found a place to lean, to rest for a while. I offer a small smile and reach for another shard. ‘Let me help.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

IFIND MYSELF BEFORE A map again, trying to focus – to tap into those lurching instincts that tell me where to turn and which step to take. But the map means nothing to me – it is on the deck that I feel it. Actually, it is high that I feel it, up on the rail at the front of the bow, my toes curling into the wood and Calybe hugging my shins so I don’t topple off. With the ocean sprawling before me, that winding path finally unravels.

On the second day, Silen frowns, staring at the same horizon.

‘This is the way to Naxos.’

‘No,’ I say – because that doesn’t feel right.

But if not Naxos, where?

It takes nearly three days to sail. Dionysus settles, a little. Resting his head on my thigh as I toy with his hair and reassure him that everything he’s seeing sounds terrifying, that I’d be concerned too if I could hear spirits of violent death, that I know something of what it is like to fear your own father. Sterope grounds him too, calming him better than my gentle words.

Dionysus spends his hours threading garlands of dried figs and ivy or crowns of pine cones and branches of myrrh. Sometimes, when he hears things, he is not quite so scared – and he speaks back, asking questions, sorting through whatever it is he’s sensing.

At one point, he seems to be spiralling, rolling from the spirits chasing him to his father’s proposed schemes, trying to plot out his next move and who else he might have got involved, when all at once he blinks and says, ‘It’s happening again, isn’t it?’ then leaps from his seat to thrust his head into a basin of water, left overnight and chilled on the deck.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask, rushing over, just for him to flip his head back, specks of the icy water spraying from his hair and peppering my skin.

‘Shock to the system,’ he says. And it pulls him out of his cyclone thoughts for a little while.

Silen is right. Perhaps most of the time he does not know what he is seeing is not real, but Dionysus has been through this before and has been preparing for its return for a long time. A part of him, in some tighter spiral of his mind, perhaps, clearly suspects. Somewhere, he is trying so very desperately to escape this.

Still, there are moments where he shouts back, like he could drown the cackling spirits out.

Times when he demands I leave him – because I’m mortal and I’m in more danger if his father comes. He insists he doesn’t want me there, tells me I’m making everything worse, that this is why no god would ever think to take a mortal wife and he was stupid, foolish, arrogant …

Sometimes Silen and Hermes come swooping in, distracting him as he suggests cursing his father first before Zeus can reach him himself. Opora and Calybe attempt to distract me in turn, their near-constant bickering transformed into a performative comedy, while Myrto braids my hair and Zosime, having finally relented, plies me with honey cakes.

And Dionysus is not only his illness. When he is more lucid, we squabble in our usual manner, and then all at once a wave hurls us together, and next thing I know our lips are brushing over one another and I am grasping him so tightly I dig nail marks into my palms through their grip on his chiton.

It is turbulent. But it is better than the alternative: him, facing this alone. Me, not having any version of him at all by my side.

The islands trickle in until all at once there are so many the ocean feels crowded. And soon shapes feel familiar. I watch as we sail right past Naxos, perched at the edge of the boat, pointing until … oh.

Hermes leans against the rail. ‘Delos,’ he says. ‘Of course.’

‘Of course?’

‘It’s the most sacred isle there is. Mortals are not permitted to be born or to die or to be buried upon its land. Where better for a woman so many want dead to hide than in a place they cannot kill her?’