Stone Blind(37)

‘I don’t know why you ask me what I’d like if you aren’t going to listen to the answer.’

‘I’m sorry.’ The blacksmith took another step closer. ‘I was asking you as a way of introducing the subject. Because I didn’t want to just tell you what he said.’

‘Did he tell you to make me a wooden chair?’ she asked. ‘Because he might not have been giving you the best advice.’ Hephaestus now stood in front of her and looked fondly at his handiwork.

‘There’s room for both of us,’ he said. ‘Look.’ He spun awkwardly on his good ankle and sat down heavily beside her. Athene was beginning to wish she had asked another blacksmith, even a mortal one, to make her weapons. Hephaestus didn’t normally behave like this and she didn’t like it. She shifted away from him.

‘Don’t run away,’ he said. ‘Please.’

‘I’m not running anywhere. I’m moving because you’re sitting so close that your hip was touching mine and I didn’t like it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Can I tell you about Poseidon?’

‘Will it take long?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Could you tell me while you’re making my new spear?’

‘No, I need to tell you here,’ he said. ‘Your uncle said I should ask you to marry me.’

She stared at the blacksmith god, her head slightly tilted as though she were trying to see what lunacy had crawled in through his ears.

‘He was mistaken,’ she said.

‘He wasn’t.’ Hephaestus grabbed her hand in his, and held it. Athene knew she could easily outrun him, but his arms and hands were like the iron they worked. She wondered if it would be more effective to stamp on his good foot or the bad one.

‘I don’t like to be touched,’ she said.

‘I know,’ Hephaestus replied. ‘It’s one of a thousand things I love about you.’

‘But you’re touching me, when you know I don’t like it.’

‘Because I want to be the one whose touch you like.’

‘You aren’t. No one is.’

‘You don’t mind when your owl flutters down and perches on your shoulder,’ he said. ‘You hold out your arm to him, so he can land more easily.’

‘He’s an owl.’

‘I think you could love me like that.’

‘I couldn’t.’

He pulled her hand towards him. ‘I’ve already asked Zeus. He approves the match.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether he approves it or not, because there isn’t a match.’

‘I want you.’ He leaned towards her, pulling her closer. She could smell hot metal on his skin.

‘I don’t want you,’ she said. ‘Let go of me.’ She wriggled to try and free her hand, and felt his body tense. She pulled harder and suddenly he let go. She jumped up, away from him, watching to ascertain if he would follow her or grab at her. But his whole body had gone limp. She saw a hateful satisfaction on his face and followed his gaze, glancing down at her tunic.

She felt the heat of his semen before she saw it, and she pulled at her cloak, tearing off a piece of the finely woven cloth. She swabbed her thigh clean, then hurled the wool to the ground in disgust. She wanted to scream that she hated him, and would never marry him, would never marry anyone, would go straight to Zeus and tell him what Hephaestus had done to her. But as she opened her mouth to say all this, she knew it was only half-true. She hated him and would never marry, but she was not going to tell Zeus what had happened, because she was too ashamed. She knew she was being ridiculous, because she had done nothing to be ashamed of. And yet, looking down at the slumped body of Hephaestus – his eyes closed, unworried – she could see that he felt no shame at all for what he had done. And yet, it was a shameful act and disgust and contempt were the proper response. If Hephaestus did not feel these things, then she must. They had to go somewhere.

And so she ran away from the forge, away from Olympus, hating Hephaestus and Poseidon and Zeus and herself.





Medusa


They bound Medusa’s eyes with damp cloths, in the hope that the pain would die down, as the pains in her head had done. But it did not. If anything, the burning sensation grew stronger with each day. The dark mass of snakes swirled around her head, each of them somehow taking care not to dislodge the bindings. She relied on touch to find her way around the cave, which she already knew so intimately that it took very little time to learn without sight. Sometimes she felt cold and would move to the cave entrance, tracing her way along the wall with the lightest touch of her fingers. She would sit with the sun on her face, her back resting against warm rock, her hands buried in the piles of dried seaweed that littered the shore. Sometimes she would raise broken pieces to her lips, and taste the sea.

She didn’t mind the darkness as much as the losses. She missed everything she could hear and many more things she could not. The constant cries of birds were a comfort, reminding her of the way they swooped and arced over the waves. She could hear the cormorants arguing with the gulls and she knew exactly which rocks they had perched on before picking their quarrel. She heard the sheep murmuring to one another, and smiled. Euryale herded a pair towards her, so she could lose her hands in the thick wool on their chests. She could feel the seagrass fluttering and the soft curves the wind left on the sand beneath her feet. She still had so much, she reminded herself.