Shimmering Splendor Read online

  She had not responded to what he had said while they moved within the house. It was too awkward to talk to someone who kept to the shadows behind her, but she had not forgotten her purpose of clarifying just what was worshipped above the altars of Hellas. In the book room, she went and sat down at one end of the table, setting the lamp beside her. A chair from the other side of the room, barely visible outside of the glow of her lamp, disappeared completely. A moment later she heard the scritch of its feet as someone heavy sat down and slid it forward.

  “Like gods, you say, but that brings me back to what I asked you first. Why does Poseidon need a favor from Aphrodite? Can he not accomplish his purpose without her help?”

  “As I said before, yes and no.” The monster’s warm chuckle and the tone, which implied a fuller explanation would follow, soothed away her irritation before she was fully aware of it. “What I mean is that Poseidon has enormous power. He can whip the sea into mountains that will cover the land and move the waters so that the land above them shifts and rises and falls. The trouble with using that power to punish those who disobey him is that he might well wipe out the whole population around the guilty. That would not be humane—” The chuckle sounded again. “I am not sure that would much trouble Poseidon, but wiping out the population would also result in a great diminishing of worshippers, which would not be to Poseidon’s benefit.”

  With wide eyes, Psyche said, “Is there no way for him to use his power more moderately?”

  “Perhaps, but how could Minos know that a mild storm or a little trembling of the earth was a sign of Poseidon’s displeasure? Look, let me tell you the whole tale and you will see why Poseidon has chosen the punishment he has—I must admit, I think it appropriate—and why Aphrodite was involved.”

  She listened with great interest, agreeing that Minos had no right to break his word just to enrich himself with Poseidon’s bull’s get, arguing about whether Minos’s wife should be involved in her husband’s punishment, but in the end, coming back to her original question.

  “I still do not see why, if Poseidon can shake the earth, he cannot beguile Pasiphae as well as Aphrodite.”

  There was a momentary silence, and then, in a mildly puzzled voice, the monster said, “It is not his Gift.” Then he added thoughtfully, as if it were the first time he had thought about it, “Power over water is his Gift. I do not know whether he ever learned any magic or whether the power that maintains his Gift can be used to evoke spells. That is why I said we are not gods. As far as I know, no matter how powerful each is, there is a sharp limit to our use—”

  “We? Our?” Psyche interrupted. “You count yourself among them?”

  “I was born an Olympian. I have my power too. I did wrong and was punished. But I still say we and us, yes.”

  “Forgive me,” Psyche said. “No matter how far from the subject I begin, I always seem to end reminding you of your misfortunes.”

  “No,” he said, a kind of surprised wonder in his voice. “Far from it. I have just come to understand that to be punished is not to be cast out. I am beginning to wonder now how much of my grief I made for myself.” She put out her hand and the darkness bulged out and covered it. His grasp was warm and strong, but Psyche turned her eyes away from her truncated arm despite the comforting pressure of his fingers. Less and less did she believe that Teras had committed any crime worthy of the agony inflicted on him. His sweetness of disposition, his willingness to take all the blame on himself, made her wish to lash out at those who had hurt him, pointing out their cruelty and unworthiness for making him still wear the horrible seeming cast on him. She wished to snarl that it was time that he be freed—but that would only hurt him more. Besides, Psyche knew that much of her fury against those who had deformed him was pure selfishness. She wanted to see him as he must have been, tall and strong, clean-limbed, with a proudly held head. With closed eyes and the image strong in her mind, she rose, pulling on his hand so that she could walk into the black cloud.

  “I am not hurt, beloved,” he whispered into her hair, “but I will not refuse the comfort you offer me.”

  * * *

  Later, she thought that the utter blackness that enveloped her was not all bad. As she had noticed earlier, the total inability to see heightened her other senses. It seemed that every change in Teras’s breathing sang a clear message of rising passion, and her skin could feel the warmth of his fingers before they touched her. She was eager, then ready, then fulfilled, but as they lay murmuring light-hearted nonsense before they slept, she remembered how shocked she had been on waking alone in the bed.

  “Teras,” she murmured. “Wake me before you leave, and say goodbye.”

  “Why should I break your sleep, love?”

  “Because morning is the time for starting the new day, the time when a husband says: I will order the ploughing of the west field today, or a wife says: My women will finish bleaching the linen today, so if you go into the town, bring me some crimson dye. We cannot have the morning, but I need that feeling, the sense that life will go on, that you and I are merely parted to do our separate duties and will come together at our day’s end.”

  “Those are very sweet words, Psyche, and very wise ones. When I left you yesterday, I felt sad, as if I had left something unfinished. Now I know what it was. I will not fail to wake you.”

  He did not, and to her intense pleasure she saw gray streaks around the shutters that betrayed the coming of dawn. He had lain with her all night. And he had not waked her only to say that he was leaving. He talked of what he would do on the coming day, saying he would ride off to Aegina to talk to Poseidon. Psyche warned him to be careful as to how he introduced the idea of Pasiphae and the bull, lest the message that Aphrodite received had become garbled in its long path to her. After a moment’s startled silence, he thanked her most heartily, admitting that there was a chance of deliberate mischief in involving Aphrodite.

  While they talked, Psyche could hear him moving around in the bedchamber, pulling on his clothes, washing—no doubt in water he had wakened the servants to bring while she still slept—cursing once when he bumped into a chest. It was all so much as she imagined a husband might speak and act when making ready for an early hunt that when he left she sank back to sleep with a strong sense of satisfaction.

  She woke to the same feeling of comfort and a need to be busy. With a clear mind and a newly sharpened housewife’s eye—the glaze of doubt and fear having been removed—she found that all was not as perfect as it first had seemed. She was happily employed in household tasks that day. The servants neither helped nor hindered her; when she asked for supplies or told them to do something specific, like move the furniture—which she now realized had not been touched for years—they obeyed, but with worried looks, as if they were not sure obedience to her orders was permitted.

  That diminished her satisfaction a little, but she soon realized that Teras could not tell them they must obey her lest she order them to help her escape. She thought briefly of pointing out to him that she had nowhere to go but a moment later dismissed the idea. She did not want to know it if he still did not trust her; nor did she want to hear that the servants were Aphrodite’s and would not obey him either. The notion might have rankled, except that night her thoughts were given a new direction.

  * * *

  Teras came early, calling to her from the edge of the forest as soon as she arrived at the bench. It was barely dusk, so she went in under the trees where the darker splotches cast by trunks and branches broke up and disguised the deeper blackness Teras cast. They strolled about while he told her of his day’s accomplishments and she, suddenly reminded by the tale of his “leaping” to Aegina and then to Crete that her monster was not only a victim but a creature of great power, woke to another reason the servants might have been uneasy. If Teras had arranged the house, they might fear to alter anything; thus she confessed that she had ordered the rearrangement of the andron and her workroom and said she hoped he did not min
d.

  The blackness stopped, half hidden by a tree trunk. Psyche could sense that Teras was staring at her. “No one had touched it for years,” she said defensively. “It was dirty, and—”

  Then he laughed and said he would not mind if she hung all the furniture from the roof—except the bed, of course—but that he thought it a sad waste of her time. Whereupon she pointed out, with perhaps a touch of bitterness, that time was one commodity of which she had a superfluity.

  “But did you not tell me that you wished to gather and try out the plants described in that scroll on magical and medicinal herbs?” he asked.

  “Magical and medicinal herbs?” Psyche repeated, totally at a loss, and then remembered that she had used that scroll as an excuse to invite him to come into the house.

  “You asked me if it would be safe for you to gather them, and—oh, I never answered you.”

  “That was my fault,” Psyche said, adding hastily so he would not think too long on the poetry that had distressed him so deeply, “but what in the world reminded you of the herbs?”

  “I went to Hermes’s house to get the translocation spells, and Hera’s maid was there complaining bitterly to one of Hermes’s servants about needing to be transported to Hera’s shrine to obtain some poultice or other. It came to my mind like a revelation that there is no source of simples in Olympus, and that you and I have no source of metal and barter goods.”

  “You wish me to gather the herbs and prepare the medicines or magical mixtures for you to sell in Olympus? But Teras, will this be permitted? Would it even be possible?”

  “Why not?”

  She could not ask whether a being under sentence for evildoing would be allowed to establish a business or whether it would be conducive to trade to have a monster serving at the stall. She asked, “Is it not necessary to get permission to begin a business? And who will serve the clients?”

  “I cannot see why permission would be needed, and there are plenty of old servants who would enjoy attending to a shop. Come, let us go look at that scroll and see if I can remember anything about it. You know, until now, all my wants have been provided by Aphrodite, but I do not think it fair, now I have a wife, that she should pay for all.”

  Any other objections Psyche might have had were silenced. She knew that his services deserved fair compensation, but for herself… She shuddered with disgust at the notion of being permanently dependent on Aphrodite’s “kindness and generosity”. Simultaneously she realized that having his own source of income might free Teras from his enslavement to the goddess. Perhaps he might not yet realize that he wished to be free, but the less he needed Aphrodite’s “kindness,” the greater the possibility, Psyche felt, that she could wean him from his dependence.

  That night they studied the scroll with care and Teras explained where it would be safe for her to go. In the dawn when he woke her, he told her he had ordered the menservants to accompany her and that as soon as he had finished the arrangements for Poseidon’s revenge on Minos, he would go with her himself for those plants that were best collected at night or before the sun rose.

  Over the weeks that followed, he did more. Even though he was nearly certain the places she could reach in a day’s exploring were free of dangerous beasts—and he came to comb the forest himself on many a day to kill or drive away any threat from an even broader area—he wished to be more sure that no harm could possibly come to her. So he taught her, himself standing in the shadow at the edge of the forest, to use a hunting spear and cast a javelin and even to shoot a small, light bow. She took such delight in her lessons that he continued them, although as the autumn deepened into the winter, there was little to gather and little purpose to going into the forest.

  Psyche missed her wandering a little; she was less aware of being cut off from everyone except Teras when she was in the woods. It was a familiar activity from her life at home, and if she did not consciously think she would return to her family, nor suffer any shock when she did arrive at Teras’s house, the gathering trips touched some comfort buried deep inside her.

  Still, she was busy enough practicing her skills with weapons when the days were crisp and bright, working with the herbs when the wind howled and the snow fell. Winter brought a ready market for syrups to soothe coughs and sore throat, pungent aromatics to clear a stuffed head, and creams and lotions to comfort chaps and chilblains. The great mages might still use magic to cure minor ills, but everyone else found Psyche’s draughts and drenches and creams and lotions less expensive and easier to obtain than spells. The shop began to prosper.

  And every evening Teras was with her and they talked of the people and doings of Olympus, the errands on which Aphrodite sent him, their own plans for the future, and their dreams. They played games with the exquisite pieces on the gorgeous boards, and they made love. They made love with their eyes amid jests and laughter, they made love with words without ever touching, and they made love abed with their bodies, every inch of their bodies.

  Little by little as the months passed and Teras’s passion seemed to grow rather than diminish, Psyche came to believe that his need for her was not based on her appearance. He had told her that, of course, but she had needed proof, and had it. She knew her beauty must now be dulled by possession and familiarity, and it was always words, a teasing remark or an ethical argument, that set the black cloud to swelling in her direction with warm, seeking lips and hands that played her like a harp.

  Equally important, the more she knew Teras, the better she liked him. In some ways he was truly a monster, not seeming to know good from evil—except as it struck him at the moment; if a thing amused or interested him, it was good, and if it bored or annoyed him, it was evil. This, she discovered, as long winter evenings passed in talk and as she spent daylight hours reading The History of the Olympians, was no special fault in Teras but was common to the Gifted among his people. But he responded swiftly to reason and seemed to enjoy learning the code of values that governed her actions.

  The pity for him and recognition that she could not change her fate, which had led her to accept the monster, became flavored with respect and admiration. Boiled together by the heat of their coupling, those tepid emotions—like a mixture of innocent herbs that could be seethed into a powerful potion—transmuted into love. Week by week Psyche’s happiness and security washed out the stains of resentment and bitterness that had sullied her. She was not aware of that. What she did feel was an occasional pang of guilt for being so deliciously happy when her parents and siblings probably mourned her as dead—or worse.

  With the arrival of spring, the pangs of guilt became somewhat more frequent, especially as the days lengthened and her time with Teras grew shorter. Aphrodite’s need for him also seemed greater in the spring; he even missed coming for a night now and again, and there never seemed to be enough time to say what needed to be said, let alone make idle conversation.

  The long, languid days of summer only made matters worse. The plants in the forest were mostly dry and sapless and not worth seeking, the heat was too great to make any exercise out of doors pleasant, and Psyche had little to do but comb the book room for material that would hold her interest—and nothing did. She began to feel cut off from life, bitterly lonely for some other voice than Teras’s, much as she loved that voice. She found herself longing to tell her sisters about Teras, to praise her man to them as they had praised their men to her, to discuss with her mother whether she dared dismiss the spell she had invoked to keep her barren. She desired Teras’s child but feared that he did not fully understand the nature of the curse on him, or, desiring her greatly, had not told her the truth to make her more willing to lie with him.

  Psyche knew there was no remedy for her discontent and that it would be useless and unkind to confess her loneliness to Teras. It was Aphrodite, not Teras, who had condemned her to live in this house cut off from all humankind except the “monster” and the mute servants. Thus it would be cruel to bewail her fate to Teras, who
had already done everything he could to make her “punishment” a joy.

  Despite her growing desire to have more human contact, a more normal life, Psyche found to her surprise that she felt little personal bitterness toward Aphrodite. How could she be bitter to the one who had given her her monster? She did resent the goddess’s skillful manipulation of Teras and remained determined to free him, but now that she understood how Olympians lived, she could no longer blame Aphrodite for punishing those who flouted her authority. Nor could she still hate and reject the “goddess of love and beauty”. Love she had found was worth praying for, and beauty was coupled to love, the beloved always beautiful in the eye of the lover. She knew that was true! Was not a black cloud of nothingness beautiful to her because she loved the being inside it?

  Because she loved Teras, Psyche did her best to hide her growing sadness. And because he loved her, she could not be successful. First he increased his attentions to her, bringing her jewels that took away her breath, ever finer clothing, and delicacies from the far corners of the earth and the vast depths of the sea. Later, when he saw that she brightened more for a loving word than for any gift, he asked her again and again how he had failed her, what he could do to bring back her joy, and she tried to laugh and insisted that she was happy or kissed him fondly and assured him that if she was not full of joy, it was no fault of his.

  * * *

  Matters came to a head as summer drifted into autumn. Psyche was turning out the clothes chests, putting the lightest silks and thinnest linens in the bottom of the chests and taking out the middleweight woolen and heavy linen tunics and himations to be aired. She felt more cheerful than usual at her task, looking forward to the lengthening periods of darkness when Teras would be with her more. She was thinking fondly of the long, cozy evenings in Teras’s arms when they had time to talk of anything and everything and to the busy days in her workshop, when she came across the gown she had worn on the day she had been sacrificed.