Elektra(17)

No prophetic agony split my head apart that night, and by the morning, I could see no other choice but to return to the temple. It made my parents relieved to see me dress once more in my sacred robes, to put on the semblance of the girl I had been before. If the others didn’t want me back there, they didn’t dare say it to the king’s daughter. I took up my duties again. I laid offerings at the feet of Apollo’s statue, as I had always done. He remained impassive: silent, motionless stone.

When I was not in the temple, I fled to the shore, leaving the walled city behind me. It was better to have nothing but the waves as company, to mutter my truths to the empty wind and the water, where the clusters of seaweed would wave in the froth as though in agreement with me.

I was used to being misheard and misunderstood. I had been a timid child and an awkward young woman, always striving to make my voice clear and brave. I was no stranger to struggling with my words, feeling them die in my throat when people looked at me. And I could see with bitter clarity that everyone thought this new manifestation of madness that had come upon me was just another part of my oddness; that I had always lived in a dreamworld, and it had only got worse. Whilst the world saw my encounter with Apollo as further proof of my strange mind, I saw that the day he had come to me in the temple was like a lightning bolt shattering the centre of my life, the cracks in the earth spiralling from it in every direction. I knew that the madness within me had not been building to that moment, but rather that the echoes of his devastation had rung back through my years as well as forward. Such was the power of Apollo: he could shatter my existence from beginning to end.



The night before Paris came back to Troy, I slept even more fitfully than usual. The next morning, I could feel the tenderness around my eyes, the gritty soreness that told of the hours I had spent awake in the bowels of the night. Everything that day seemed like an illusion, as though the city itself was made of rippling cloth; as though the ancient foundations of the mighty walls could sink at any moment into quicksand and disappear. I longed for the fresh salt of the air outside the walls, for the quiet murmuring of the breeze and the soft surge of the seawater staining the sand dark. But my duties at the temple took so much longer than usual, my fingers fumbling as I tried to light the incense and melt the scented wax to oil, to crush the flowers and create sweet fragrances to please the god who tormented me. If I could appease him, perhaps he would let me use what he had given me to help my fellow Trojans, since he loved us so dearly. I felt the stifling darkness of the room close in about me at Apollo’s altar; the eyes of his statue narrowed in silent contempt, making me drop the blooms across the stone floor.

I could tell by the blaze of the sun on the flagstones that it burned at its zenith, and I knew I was expected at the palace, but I could not turn my feet towards it. I felt that pull, stronger than ever, drowning out my sense of duty, drawing me from the city towards the shore.

I wanted the solitude, the peace, of that quiet expanse of sand, the gleam of the water in the distance whilst the city broiled behind me, full of chatter and bustle and noise. But as I peered down from the high city walls, I could see movement. A figure – a man – walking towards the gates of Troy.

I felt a swoop in my stomach, the familiar rolling lurch of insight. I wanted this man to turn around, to walk away, but he kept coming with a confident swing in his stride. My throat burned with the sour foretaste of vomit, and I closed my eyes, but still I saw him, coming towards Troy with disaster at his heels.

I heard the gates rolling back for him, even as I whimpered for them to stop. No one was there to hear me; no one would have listened or cared if they had been. The stone wall dragged roughly against my face as I sagged downwards against it, pulling my hands about my head, desperate for it to stop. I could not see the shape of it yet, but I knew this man carried the collapse of the world with him.

Could I run? In front of Troy there was nothing: just the long plains giving way to the beach and the vast seas beyond. Behind us rose the mountains, sparse and scrubby. I saw myself set upon by wild beasts, my bones picked apart by vultures, or suffocated by the heavy water, my carcass gnawed by fish.

And if I ran, who would warn my parents of what had come for them, for us all? This, surely, was why Apollo had given me his insight. A chance to save my city. A chance to earn the gratitude of my people, and a place among them at last.

Nothing burned around me, but I could taste ashes in the air. I put one foot in front of the other, dragged myself towards the palace. I was late. My cheek was torn by scratches where the stones had grazed my face; my white dress was stained with dust. No wonder people looked away from me: the princess of Troy, arriving at a banquet looking ragged and haunted and strange. But I could feel the power thrumming in my body, at last in alignment with my brain. Prophecy, as I had always imagined it would be: a power and a privilege.

Paris, my brother, sat between my mother and father, returned to the bosom of his family. His dark eyes sparkled, his nut-brown skin gleamed with health and vitality, his hair clustered in shining curls about his head. Hecabe’s hand lay across his on the table, her goblet of wine pushed aside as she drank in his presence instead. Priam, laughing and carefree as he embraced his son. The sprawling spread of my family filled the hall, the sons and daughters of Priam by my mother in the foremost seats, and the rest thronging on the long wooden benches.

I made my way towards them through the crowded hall. I knew it was all wrong; that I should not approach like this, that I was doing everything badly. But still, my feet moved on. Paris looked up and saw me.