Shimmering Splendor Page 22

  For a moment, Eros simply sat on the boar’s back, catching his breath and thanking the Mother that the creature had not been full grown. He might not have come so easily out of the contest between them had the boar reached its full size and weight. Then he smiled. There were other reasons to be thankful also. An old boar was tough to chew as well as tough to kill; this one would make better eating.

  That thought got him to his feet and made him glance anxiously at the sun. Psyche would reach the altar soon and then would take only a moment to translocate to the garden. If he could carry the animal back… Eros stooped and heaved. The boar moved but did not rise. Carrying it was out of the question. He had no rope with which to make a harness to drag the beast, and no way to explain to the menservants where to find it. At that, Eros laughed. Poor old men, the two of them could not manage such a load. His only choices were to butcher the animal or leave it to the scavengers.

  Eros glanced at the sun again and shook his head. He was being a too-eager fool once more and making grief for himself. Unless she ran all the way up the mountain and did not stop to eat or rest, Psyche could not arrive before sunset. A needle of doubt pricked him; Eros knew he would have done just that—run all the way. But he did not follow the thought to its uncomfortable conclusion. He turned his attention to the boar, telling himself that he had more than enough time to butcher it, which would serve the double purpose of keeping him busy.

  With that in mind, he made a good job of it, skinning the animal first and selecting the most succulent portions to carry back. The remainder he wrapped in the skin and lodged in the crotch of a convenient tree. Perhaps he would bring Psyche to collect it and show her how her dinner had been won. Having allowed the thought of her into his mind, he jumped up, aware of the long shadows. It would be dusk before he was back at the lodge. She would be angry if he were not there waiting. Unbidden there was inside him a faint echo of the words, only a little changed—perhaps she would not be angry.

  Eros bundled the chosen portions of the boar into his cloak and set off, restraining himself from running. He was so intent on finding an irritated Psyche waiting that he almost forgot to invoke the spell of darkness. He was reminded by seeing the bench where they met in fine weather…empty. A chill of disappointment made him hesitate. He would have waited at the bench. Nonsense, he told himself. Poor Psyche must be exhausted from climbing the mountain; she would want to wash and put on fresh clothes. He ran across the garden, telling himself she would be starving; Psyche had an excellent appetite and would be very cross having to wait to eat.

  He bounded up the steps into her bedchamber, holding his hunting trophy out. The chamber was polished to perfection…and it was empty. Refusing to believe, he rushed into his own chamber, into the book room. Worse had befallen him than a tongue-lashing. She had not come.

  Had the servants been able to see Eros’s face, they would have fled the house. As it was they cowered back against the walls when he roared, “Where is she?” at them. No gesture was made to any room he had not searched, but he had known before he asked. He flung his bloodstained cloak and its contents onto the floor and fled the house before he killed them all—and then he remembered what Aphrodite had said: that Anerios had run all naked to pull Psyche out of bed and send her on her way…

  So she had not been willing to come back; her father had to force her. Then it was not surprising that she was late. Dragging steps took longer to climb a mountain, and no doubt she had stopped again and again to rest, perhaps to plead with Anerios not to force her. Oh, she would come. Anerios feared Aphrodite too much to yield to Psyche’s pleas. She would come and kiss him and love him and laugh—like any captive slave who pleases a master because she has no other way to live.

  Eros went into the garden and sat on the bench to wait. Dusk deepened into full dark. He knew he should go back to Aphrodite’s house and let Psyche arrive in an empty lodge, arrive to a cold welcome of absence and frightened servants so she would understand that her master was angry. He could ask Aphrodite’s scryer to show him what Psyche was doing and berate her for deliberate delay. But he did not move, only sat, waiting while rage and despair battled for supremacy.

  He was stiff and cold, his mind blank with exhaustion, when he rose at last, intending to seek his bedchamber in Aphrodite’s house. Into the emptiness of heart and mind came a thin mental wailing; something tugged at him, something wanted Teras. Teras? Then it occurred to him that Anerios was far too frightened of Aphrodite to allow Psyche to delay this long. Aphrodite had told him that Psyche was already on her way when she woke him. Lagging footsteps and demands for rest would be tolerated only for a limited time. Could some accident have occurred?

  On the thought, Eros arrived beside the altar on Mount Pelion to be assaulted by a wild mental anguish, a sense of abandonment so violent that he staggered back, gasping with shock. It was another moment before his physical ears made out a hoarse sobbing and his eyes found the crumpled figure lying on the stone.

  “Psyche!” he exclaimed.

  The huddle stirred, struggled to rise, fell back, gasping, “Teras?”

  He felt the wash of relief and ran to gather her up in his arms. She clung to him with a momentary frantic strength before she went limp and her touch was gone from his mind.

  “Psyche,” he cried. “What happened?”

  She did not reply, and she was cold, so cold that the chill struck through her clothes and his, and for one horrified moment he thought her dead. Then she stirred, one hand feebly seeking to touch him. He caught the hand in his; it was clammy and freezing. He had no cloak to warm her and tried to curve his body around hers to provide some heat.

  “I thought you would never come,” she whispered. “I called you and called you.”

  “You fool! You had a spell to bring you back to the lodge. I was waiting there for you. Did you forget it?”

  “I tried.” Her voice was only a thread of sound. “I had not the strength to invoke it.”

  “But you had strength to go from the lodge to Iolkas,” he reminded her resentfully.

  Her head moved slightly, as if she intended to lift it and either could not or thought better of it. “I did not know that going would take so much from me. Why did you not warn me?”

  “You know spells take power. You countered my spell on your father.”

  “That, too, took all I had.”

  He remembered then that what she said was true. He had known after she blocked the compulsion to desire the sow he had set on Anerios that she was nearly empty. That was why she was so cold! He clutched her chilled, limp body closer and bent his head to kiss her hair.

  “I am so sorry, beloved,” he said. “I never thought. Give the spell to me and I will invoke it.”

  “Give it to you?” Surprise gave a little more strength to her voice. “How?”

  Did she wish to retain the travel spell so she could use it again? “Just as I gave it to you,” he snapped.

  “But how? Teras, I was inside the cloud when you gave me the spell I saw nothing. All I felt was that you touched my head and a faint tingling passed from that place over my body.”

  Her voice had grown fainter and fainter until he could hardly hear it. And she felt colder to him. Fool that he was to sit here in the cold arguing with her!

  Eros leaped back to the garden of the lodge, carried Psyche within. As soon as he saw her face in the light, he bellowed for the women servants to heat stones to warm her bed and soup and wine to warm her stomach. He took her to his own room while they scurried to obey and wrapped her in the furs from his bed. She lay flaccid in his arms, her head lolling when he did not support it. That might be a pretense, but not the pinched face, devoid of all color, or the clammy cold. Psyche was either in an extremity of terror or too drained from spell-casting.

  Since he knew that Psyche had not fallen into such a state even when she had first confronted what she believed was a monster who would kill her, Eros seized gladly on the latter reason for her
state. He cast all doubt away and devoted himself to warming her and feeding her, and he was so happy when she begged him to come into the bed and warm her with his body rather than using hot stones or sand that he thought the pain he had suffered nothing in comparison with his present joy.

  He left Psyche sleeping to explain to Aphrodite why she had not returned, and Aphrodite shook her head sadly and said, ‘That may indeed be true, but what a stupid girl! If she knew she had not enough strength, why did she not go to the temple and send a message to you?”

  To that Eros had no answer, although he said to Aphrodite that Psyche probably had never thought of it. Aphrodite agreed, laughing, that Psyche probably was stupid enough to overlook the obvious. Oddly, Eros felt no inclination to leap to his lover’s defense. He knew she was not stupid; her mind was keen and often made sense of what his did not. If she had not gone to the temple, it was not for lack of remembering or understanding.

  He stayed no longer, telling Aphrodite that Psyche was still very weak and he wanted to watch by her. And Aphrodite laughed again and waved him off, kissing her hand to him as she murmured that Psyche no doubt needed watching.

  Eros winced internally because he had taken the words in their negative sense, which a moment later he was sure Aphrodite did not intend. But Psyche’s greeting soothed the prick of the thorn of suspicion. She had wakened during his absence and was weeping softly, but her whole face lit when the black cloud that surrounded him filled the doorway. And when he asked why she wept, she laughed and said it was because she thought he would not return until night—and she reached eagerly into the darkness, no longer looking away or shuddering when parts of her body were swallowed up. Even the sharp contrast between his blackness and the sunlit room seemed to cause her no fear or doubt. She clung to him, half in and half out of the cloud, until she fell asleep again.

  * * *

  Joy returned, warming the few remaining weeks of autumn and the long, dark nights of winter—but not such a clean, sparkling joy as had filled Eros’s days and nights before Psyche had gone home. Here and there, like in the lamplit chambers of winter, lay shadows.

  The first of those shadows had been cast by the fact that Psyche did not recover normally from the draining of her power. For days she claimed to be too weak to get out of bed, and Eros could not understand it. He had been drained himself from time to time—in Iolkas when he forced the use of a too-thinned spell he had almost fallen from weakness—but that had lasted only a few minutes. Soon he had found the strength to walk, and before the next morning, the Mother had restored him.

  He could not help suspecting that Psyche wished to keep the translocation spell and was claiming weakness so he would not press her to do anything magical. And his suspicions were increased by the difficulty she claimed to have in learning how to find the spell, separate it from any others within her, bring it to some outer part of her body, and touch it to the person or place to which she wished to transfer it. Psyche learned everything quickly. However, the delight with which she did transfer that spell, and then two or three others, and then still more as she grew stronger and was able to cast them, made those suspicions seem foolish, and yet she was so clever…

  Alternating with his fear that she wished to hold a spell that would permit her to flee him was an even sillier doubt. Because he was afraid to trust her now-open avowals of affection, he leapt to the conclusion that Psyche was claiming weakness to avoid his love-making. That had seemed to be false, too, for she insisted on his joining her in bed rather than resting alone that very first night. And once in the bed, he was kissed and caressed most warmly…most intimately…although the hands that touched him were ice cold and trembling. Coupling left her prostrate and weeping—she said for joy. Eros believed her…he wanted to believe her.

  The light of his joy was also blemished by the fact that Psyche was not eager to talk about her visit. When questioned, she laughed and said it was partly because she had not found it pleasant—she detailed for him her sisters’ envy, which she claimed she had not enjoyed as she expected; the hungry eyes and wet lips, the lewd touches and suggestions, the even more direct approaches of the men, like the one she had knocked down by the stair to the women’s quarters and the other she had tipped into the latrine—and partly, she added lightly, because her family and Iolkas were no longer important to her. She had removed any guilt they might have about her, and she no longer felt any obligation toward them.

  Perversely, the darkest and most ominous shadows arose from what should have assured Eros of Psyche’s pleasure in being “home”. She called the lodge that for the first time, and when she was strong enough she threw herself with great passion into gathering herbs before the first freeze, examining clothing and supplies, giving him lists of items to buy and bring to her to be sure they were well stocked for winter, and attending to every and any household task with what seemed an almost demented devotion. She laughed and kissed him for no reason and seemed to spend any odd moment in her days thinking of astonishing (and sometimes near impossible) ways to make love at night.

  Eros turned his back on the shadows so he could not see them, but from time to time some change in the position of his mind brought them leaping out, stretching ahead of him toward some well of sorrow. And even when they were not starkly apparent, they darkened his mind and spirit. Worst of all was the way a splinter of doubt, illuminated by the light of love and laughter, could be exaggerated into a pillar of guilt.

  For a very long time Psyche noticed nothing of her lover’s uneasiness. Not only her bodily strength but some quality of soul seemed to have been leached away by the backlash of the failed spell. For days after her return she desired nothing but to cling to Teras, to draw within her the warmth of his body and his love. She cared nothing for the blackness that surrounded him and pleaded with him to stay with her through the day as well as through the night. Then, when he agreed, she grew afraid that his absence would offend Aphrodite, and she sent him back to serve his “goddess”. She had got back to her Teras despite all Aphrodite could do, she told herself, but Aphrodite was probably thoroughly annoyed; she had better walk very softly for a time.

  Oddly, the real beginning of her healing was when Teras demanded back the translocation spell. Psyche had not the faintest idea how to return it, which she wished most earnestly to do; she had nightmares about invoking the spell by accident and dying of the draining or being permanently lost in a terrible wild country into which Teras was forbidden to come. But no matter what Teras said, she could not conceive of how a set of words, often chanted over a smoke of special herbs, could be gathered together and given to someone who did not know either the words or the herbs to use.

  After trying for days to explain, Teras had asked her how she knew she had not enough power to invoke the travel spell. When she told him about her well and the mist within it and he countered with a description of his little box holding tiny balls of silver, Psyche at last understood.

  She had always known the glowing mist within her was her power. Now, examining that with her mind’s eyes, she saw that there were shining droplets clinging to the sides of her empty well. Those gave her no strength; indeed, the walls of the well were stiffer and colder where they touched it so they must be spells drawing power to maintain themselves. Having recognized them, she soon found she could make them move. Then she had to gather the courage to pry the cap off the well so she could fish the spells out. That was a struggle, but once the well was open, she discovered that removing something from it did not awake in her the fear that drawing in power engendered.

  Soon the cap of fear did not leap back to seal the well the moment she relaxed her will. The well was always open, and she could reach in and bring out a spell anytime and as quickly as she wanted. It oozed into the fingers she touched to her breast and formed into a flattened globe that shimmered with changing colors like the surface of water touched with oil, but it never burst or ran out over her hand. The spell lay in her palm, coruscating
with ripples of light, unless she deliberately spilled it into Teras’s hand. She could not see what happened as it poured away, but Teras told her that he had received it and taken it in.

  Psyche’s attention was so fixed on this new skill, which seemed to delight Teras, she hardly noticed that in the absence of the cap, her well had filled with a thicker mist, glowing more brightly than ever before. All she was aware of was that her strength and well-being returned, and that day by day she was filled with a bubbling joy and a great need for an outlet for her overflowing energy. She ranged far into the woods, often with Teras, who had told her about the boar and seemed most willing to use that as an excuse to accompany her. When he was away, she steeped and ground and compounded until the shelves of the shop and in her own workroom were filled to capacity. Then she ordered a thorough cleaning of the house, taking on herself the tasks that were too heavy for the two old women, cleaned and repaired the winter clothes, experimented with new recipes for both food and unguents.

  Psyche was busy every minute, never tired, hardly able to wait until the light failed and she could get abed with Teras for further experiments even more delightful than those that created good food and scented lotions. Somewhere she had read that the paths of sexual pleasure were infinite, and it seemed a worthy and amusing purpose to try to discover whether the dictum was true. Delightedly, each night she set out to find a new way to tease her and her lover into convulsions of passion.

  Sometimes Psyche noticed that Teras was more silent than usual and carelessly assumed it was because she was talking too much or had caused him to assume a position he found ugly or awkward. Psyche herself thought it comical when they became so entangled that lust was extinguished rather than excited and they had to begin again. But perhaps Teras, who often seemed to forget that she could not see him, feared awkwardness would intensify his ugliness.

  It was not until the winter solstice had passed and the days were growing longer again that Psyche recovered from the euphoria that had held her and established a more normal emotional balance. She did not think much about what she now realized had been abnormally high spirits, assuming that they were owing to being safe in her own home with the person she loved and having once and for all cast off the burdens of mingled affection and resentment that her family had laid upon her. However, as her emotions steadied, she became more aware of what Teras said, of his hesitations and nuances of tone. It began to dawn upon her that Teras was not as happy as she.