Shimmering Splendor Page 19

  “I want you not to go at all,” he said sadly. “I am missing you already.”

  She ran into the cloud and hugged him. “I will miss you too, love, and I would ask you to come with me, but I am afraid my family would not be made very happy at seeing me disappear into a black cloud.” She smiled, knowing he would sense it. “Once I have convinced them that I am happy, I need not think of them anymore.”

  “Will you need several days to convince them?”

  She buried her face in his breast. “Oh, Teras, I fear there is a sad lack of generosity of spirit in me. I know my sisters probably made much of their joys in marriage mostly because they were envious of me. But I was horribly envious of them. I want time to tell everyone what a wonderful husband I have and time to wear some of my jewels and beautiful gowns. I want to tell my mother and father and brothers about our fine shop—even though I have never seen it—and about the fine profit it makes—”

  “Very well.” He could not help laughing. Her eager recounting of her satisfaction, particularly that in the shop which could not continue to make a profit without her, lightened his spirit. “I can see that it will not be possible to accomplish all that boasting in a few hours.

  “But—” he tightened his grip on her “—do not forget that while you are enjoying yourself, I will be sitting alone in the dark and sleeping alone in a cold and empty bed.”

  “Must you be alone, Teras?”

  “If you mean does my punishment condemn me not to seek out others, no, but memories are long among Olympians, and few desire my company.”

  “But you are changed!”

  He did not like her insistence that he could find other company. “Am I? Perhaps. But you have spoiled me, Psyche. Now I do not want their company. They are shallow and greedy. I can no longer live without you, beloved. I would rather be alone.”

  “I almost wish I did not have to go,” she said slowly, “but I must. I really must. Perhaps I will not stay only to boast of my happiness, but I must be sure they will no longer grieve for me.”

  “I think that is true,” he agreed, feeling more cheerful. And, although he was not easy about her answer, fearing it would raise new doubts in him, he asked, “When do you wish to leave? I have the translocation spell and can give it to you any time.”

  “Can you discover when my family will go up the mountain? I would wish to be there when they arrive.”

  “You do not wish to flee me at once?”

  “I do not wish to flee you at all!” she exclaimed. “I sometimes wish… No, Aphrodite has been generous enough. I will ask for no more.”

  Eros was delighted with that response. He had no idea what favor she might desire from Aphrodite, but did not ask. He was certain he could obtain whatever she wanted, and he intended that she should have it after she returned, to wash away whatever sadness she felt at parting from her family. He hugged her tightly and then pushed her out of the cloud.

  “You will want to begin your packing.”

  “No, I will not,” she said laughing. “I can do that during the day, when you are not with me. I want my revenge for that game of tables in which you beat me so soundly. I think you cheated!”

  He had not cheated. He had not needed to give more than half his mind to any game they had played for months because she had suggested the games only to avoid conversation. She was so clever. Was she now suggesting a game so he would not see how happy she was to leave him?

  “No,” he said. “I want to see what you will take.”

  “You want to bite on a sore tooth, you mean,” she protested, laughing and slipping back into the cloud and into his arms. “And you will no doubt sigh lugubriously every five minutes so that I will have a guilty conscience. Well, I will not play that game.” She reached up blindly, found his head, and drew his face down to hers. “But I will play another and prove to you how very much I like being with you.”

  She proved, at least, that she had learned the lessons he had taught her very well, teasing him into such high excitement that he very nearly lost control and outstripped her. Not that it would have mattered, because he had barely caught his breath before she was at him again, and that time, drained as he was, he was able to bring her to sighing and singing a full three times.

  They slept awhile after that, but when they woke, Psyche dragged him to her workroom and went over the list of sales from the shop, planning what she would need to prepare before she left and what supplies he must collect while she was gone so that she could make new stock as soon as she returned. She lured him back to bed when the plans were set and seemed content to lie quietly in his arms. Toward dawn, however, she woke with a start and clutched him and whispered, “Love me. Love me.”

  Eros was so tired when he left at dawn that he went to Aphrodite’s house to sleep before he translocated to the temple at Iolkas to ask Hyppodamia to discover for him when Psyche’s family intended to “release her soul” and whether they did, indeed, plan to have the ceremony on Mount Pelion. It took some time for the priestess’s messenger to go and return—although Hyppodamia’s messengers were treated with profound respect and he was not kept waiting at the palace—so Eros was very late in arriving at the lodge.

  Psyche greeted him with near frantic relief, as if she thought some ill had befallen him—or was it because she had not taken the translocation spell when he offered it and she feared she had lost her opportunity to escape? She did not make him any happier by refusing to answer when he asked her why she was upset, only clinging to him and hiding her face. Then she said she had seen a shadow slinking past a thicket in the woods somewhat farther south than she usually went. The beast, if it was a beast, had not attacked her, she admitted, but it had frightened her from going farther, to a meadow rich with asphodel beyond. Would he please hunt it or drive it away—or make sure that it was not a beast she had seen?

  Eros assured her the forest would be cleared of any danger when she returned, but he did not think the shadow in the thicket—if there had been a shadow—was what was troubling her. Nonetheless, she did not ask for the spell. Better yet, she shuddered and clung to him even more tightly when he explained why he was late and told her that they had been out in their calculations and that the ceremony on Mount Pelion would be the very next day.

  Then he said, “No beast frightened you, my love. What do you fear?”

  “I do not know,” she whispered. “I do not know. I do not want to leave you, Teras. And yet I must. I must see them, I must. The image of their grief instills bitterness into every sweetness you have brought into my life. Soon I will hate that sweetness and myself. I must go.”

  “But Psyche, it does not sound as if you feel they were so kind to you, so loving, that you should be certain their grief will be deep and wounding.”

  “Oh, no, they were neither kind nor very loving, except Damianos, and even he agreed to sacrifice me. But that is why! Do you not understand, Teras? It is because they know as well as I that they were unjust to me, blaming me for what I could not help. That is what will gnaw at them, and I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to be so very happy while guilt is a canker in them and perhaps will make them truly evil when they were only selfish and thoughtless before.”

  * * *

  Psyche left at dawn the next morning, Eros looming black behind her as she fetched what she would take. He had said he would carry it down to the garden for her, half expecting to see a chest packed with all her clothing and jewels. His suspicions had been again aroused by the passion and inventiveness with which she had made love. Why should she feed on him so, he wondered, when she expected to be gone only a few days? He had a speech all prepared, explaining that it took more power to move inanimate things like garments and that she might not have enough, but he never made it. Laughing, she handed into the cloud a small packet, which surely could not contain more than two gowns and a few necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.

  Still, the way she held to him when he said he would give her the spell made him u
neasy. Why should she cling? Why should she tell him again and again that she would come back as soon as she could?

  “When I have given you the spell,” he said, “you must invoke it by saying, Dei me exelthein Oros Pelioze. And when you want to return, Dei me exelthein xenodo-cheionse. Say the words over a few times. You must not forget them, and you must pronounce them correctly.”

  She practiced dutifully. Her ear was good and in a few tries she had accent and emphasis correct. He handed her her packet and called up the spell, seeing it rise into his palm as a loose ball of sparkling silver. When it was complete, he touched the ball to the top of her head and saw a mist of silver motes fall over and cling to her body. He put her out of the cloud and said, his voice harsh with anxiety, “Go. Go now! No, do not speak to me again. Go!”

  “Teras—” Psyche breathed, but the black void was retreating, going back to the house, and she did not call aloud.

  She understood that he had turned his back because he could not bear to see her disappear. Tears rose to her eyes. There was no one as wonderful as Teras. Though he knew himself ugly and frightening, he had played her no jealous scenes, had uttered neither threats nor pleas. For a few moments longer, until the blackness was hidden by the closing of the door, she stood looking after him.

  She hoped her qualms had not communicated themselves to him. After the first flood of joy when Teras told her Aphrodite had given permission for her to visit her home, a dreadful sense of foreboding had taken hold of her. She had tried again and again to cast it off, but she could not rid herself of the fear that Aphrodite’s permission had an evil purpose. Had the goddess sensed that Teras was no longer so dependent on her, that he might break free of her hold on him? Had Aphrodite bade her priestess to have Psyche held—or even killed—to be rid of the person who loved Teras and was loved by him, the person who had provided him with a way to make a livelihood without serving her?

  Psyche drew a deep, trembling breath. She had not dared mention her fears to Teras; whether or not he believed her, to hint to him that Aphrodite wished to separate them would be a disaster. If he had not believed her, he might have thought she was making an excuse in advance for not returning and forbidden her to go. But as much as she believed ill would come of this visit, equally she knew that if she did not purge herself of her responsibility to her family, worse evil would befall. And worse still would befall if Teras believed Aphrodite had deliberately allowed her to go in order to part them. He would have flown into a rage, perhaps even challenged the goddess. Heaven alone knew what punishment would have been visited on him, and Teras had suffered enough.

  Psyche sighed again. She had done everything she knew to convince him she would come back, except say it over and over in words, until she felt him drawing himself out of her arms. And of course, that had made everything worse. Now he probably suspected she would not—Psyche deliberately cut off the thought. She was coming around to the beginning. She must either go now, or return to the house and tell Teras she would not go at all and live with the nightmare of the corroding souls of those who had thrust her into damnation to save themselves.

  “Dei me exelthein Oros Pelioze,” she said clearly.

  The little mist in the well inside her congealed. More power flowed in from her muscles, from her organs, from her very skin so that she grew cold, and colder.

  Her vision began to dim, the garden wavering around her. And she was falling, falling as she had fallen in her father’s chamber when Otius had forced her to use the counterspell again. She cried out in despair, thinking she had tried to invoke the spell and failed, but then she heard shrieks and shouts, many men and women, and felt lumps and sharp edges bruising her all over.

  She was barely strong enough to raise herself on an elbow and cry out, “Do not fear. I am Psyche, not a spirit or a demon.”

  There was a dead silence and then Beryllia came forward slowly whispering, “Psyche? Are you not torn to pieces, my poor child?”

  “Oh mother,” Psyche said, levering herself upright. “I feared that was what you would believe and that you would make yourself miserable. That was why I begged to come home for a little while—and merciful Aphrodite granted my prayer.”

  She almost choked over those words, but she would not give Aphrodite—if she was scrying what was taking place—any chance to tell Teras that she was ungrateful.

  “How can we tell you are really Psyche and not some simulacrum sent to fool us into leaving the rites incomplete so that Psyche’s unquiet spirit may torment us further?” Otius snarled.

  “For one thing,” Psyche snapped back, sliding to the edge of the altar so that she could get her feet on the ground, stand up, and rub the sore spots where she had come into painful contact with bowls of grain and small jars of oil, “you can look at the bruises I got landing on your offerings. I never heard of a simulacrum that could get black and blue.”

  “That’s our Psyche,” Damianos whooped, pushing past his older brother to take her in his arms and hug her tight. “Oh, sister, I am so glad to see you! I cannot tell you how glad.” He clutched her tighter and burst into tears. “I could not sleep for hearing you scream and scream.”

  “Psyche!” Her father’s voice had a softness she had never heard before. “Are you truly whole and unchanged?”

  “I am not unchanged, father. I have changed in many ways, but I am your daughter, Psyche, and my spirit is still in my body. There is no need for rites to release it from your house or from this altar.”

  “That is what I expected you, whatever you are, to say,” Otius remarked with a sneer.

  Psyche laughed. “Then finish the rites, by all means. They can do me no good and no harm, but I have not come to haunt you, only to relieve your minds of any fear for me. I am happy. I desire that you also be happy. That is all.”

  “But you are so pale,” Enstiktia said, coming closer. “And I see you are trembling.”

  “You are cold as ice,” Horexea cried, having reached for Psyche’s hand and then shrunk away.

  It must be true, Psyche thought. She had barely enough strength to stand and felt as if she were a brittle frozen shell around an aching hollow, all her substance drawn out of her. In fact, she would have slipped to the ground if Damianos’s arm had not supported her.

  “Pale and cold as a ghost,” Otius said.

  “But she is real!” Damianos cried. “She is solid and breathing. I can feel it.”

  Otius seized her arm and pulled her away from Damianos. “Get back on the altar,” he said, and lifted her to the center of the rock slab. “Let us see whether or not the rites to release the spirit will not banish you.”

  Chapter 13

  Psyche had made no protest. She had been glad enough for a reason to sit down, even on the altar, for her head was swimming and she feared she would faint. Perhaps she did sink into a kind of unconsciousness, for she was hardly aware of the chanting, the burning of some offerings, the pouring out of others, the anointing of her cheeks, forehead, and breast with unguents. She remembered saying, as she was helped down from the altar, that her weakness was owing to having come so far in so strange a way. That was the last thing she remembered until she opened her eyes and saw her mother sitting beside her bed.

  “Teras,” she cried, pushing herself up, terrified for a moment that she had created her life with him in a beautiful dream to ease her fear and that she had wakened from that dream into the time before her sacrifice.

  “Who is Teras?” Beryllia asked.

  “My monster,” Psyche replied, anxiously examining her mother’s face. “The monster I was to marry and did marry.”

  “You call for him?”

  Psyche breathed a sigh of relief. Beryllia’s frightened question assured her that her mother had gone with her to Mount Pelion and left her there. She had not dreamed it. She had been sacrificed—and had returned.

  “He is the dearest monster in the world,” she said, smiling. “The gentlest and cleverest being I have ever met, so
good to me, so kind. My life would be a perfect dream if only—”

  “Is he very horrible to look upon?” Beryllia’s voice trembled.

  “I have no idea,” Psyche replied, still smiling. “I have never seen him. To spare me he wears a cloud of darkness. But his looks, whatever they are, are only a seeming. When I touch him, I feel an ordinary man, tall and strong. He—”

  She stopped. She did not wish to tell her mother that Teras had not been born deformed but had committed some unnamed crime for which he had been punished by an illusion of horrible malformation. Psyche no longer believed her wonderful Teras had done evil, even though he assured her he had and that his punishment had been just. Nor did she wish to admit that Teras’s illusion of deformity had been cast on him owing to some offense taken by the selfish, greedy beings that dwelt in Olympus. However mean and petty and un-godlike, the Olympians were very powerful mages. To think of them as she now did would be very dangerous for her people, who might be led to scant their sacrifices or speak or act in other ways that would bring down Olympian wrath.

  “You were forced?” Beryllia sobbed, shuddering.

  “I was not forced, mother. After I came to know him, I went willingly to him.” She had been speaking seriously, but suddenly her eyes danced. “And it was the best thing I ever did. He has taught me to make love in the most delightful ways. Mother—”

  Beryllia’s breath drew in sharply. “You are ensorcelled, Psyche. Do you not remember your father’s passion for that sow?”

  For one moment, Psyche stared at her mother, transfixed with horror. Then she drew a breath and laughed. “No, no I am not. For a moment I was afraid, but I do not wish constantly to couple with Teras. We do so many other things, read together and talk—and quarrel about his—” she cleared her throat; she had almost said “his disgusting people” and continued hastily “—history. Mostly we talk about history and the shop we own together. One does not quarrel about the management of a shop with the object of an obsession.”