Ariadne(100)

He continued his great address as I ran, as fast as I could, looking only at Perseus. I could not allow myself to think of this army reaching Naxos, of the terror on my sons’ faces.

I was at the edge of the troops, struggling against the mass of Argive soldiers, squeezing between the heavy plates of bronze strapped to every great bulky chest. I heard their confusion, their half-formed sentences as their weight pressed upon me, choking the air from my lungs. I couldn’t feel the rain on my face any more, only the heavy breath of the men around me, their faces blocking the light from the sky, until I tumbled, panting, into a miraculously clear space.

The foot of the hill. I began to scramble up its sides. The sparse, thorny bushes scratched at my flesh as I climbed. I could see Perseus above, the slope flattening beneath me as I made it closer to him, but he did not see me. I was so close that I could hear the hiss of the serpents that twisted from the Gorgon’s head mounted upon his shield, but beneath that I heard the soft sound of a female voice.

A woman stood at his side, taller than him. I saw the flash of her crown as she bent her head, whispering into his ear. Her bare arms gleamed white.

I slowed, stared. Perseus’ eyes were glassy, empty as he listened to her.

She raised her head, stepped back from him. A satisfied smile flickered across her beautiful face. I saw her turn her head to Dionysus, hatred radiating from her wide eyes. And then she looked directly at me, dazzling and smug. Hera. Of course she would be at this battle for her city. The old nightmare rose up around me, dizzying me for a moment as I felt, once again, the suffocating weight of her glare.

Perseus flung back his head, emitted a great whoop of a war cry. Dionysus jerked his head up and I saw the shock on his face as he saw me standing there. Below us, the clamour of bronze clashed; the answering holler of the men reverberated as they charged at my husband.

I was so close to Perseus. I remembered how he had looked at me across the plain before, the glimmer of understanding that had passed between us. I opened my mouth, ready for the bargaining words to fall from my lips. But although his eyes were upon me, his stare remained unseeing. Whatever vision Hera had spun for him captivated his sight, blinded him to me. I reached my arms out towards him, desperately hoping to stop him, to jolt him from his trance, but he strode forward. He lifted his great sword, ready to plunge into the fray below, and I dodged aside just as he swung that great silver disc around from his side. I looked directly at his shield before I could turn my head away, straight into the contorted face at its centre.

Her eyes locked on to mine. I had thought they would be green, like the cold reptilian flesh that wriggled from her scalp. But they were blue: a cloudless sky, a calm ocean. An ever-replenishing well of sorrow; a sapphire melancholy of surprising gentleness. The thunder of battle was muted to a soft hum, getting more distant by the moment. I thought that I should try to stand again, but my legs were so heavy. Somewhere, far away, a streak of golden flame burned in the periphery of my vision but my head would not move to see.

As the slow tide of stone crept across my body, stiffening and cold, he moved and was before me. There was no sound any more, and my mouth was frozen in a foolish, startled shape. I could not say his name but in the slowing pulses of my brain, I knew him.

I noticed, with a barely perceptible jolt of surprise, that he was crying. ‘Ariadne,’ he said. His fingers traced the sculpted planes of my face but I could not feel their touch any more.

I knew that there was no fighting around us and that he had lifted me, somehow, away from it all. Behind his face, there was only the empty sky. He was speaking again, but I heard nothing. He pressed his face to mine: cold stone against immortal flesh. His pain. It permeated the creeping paralysis of my mind. I felt it, the ragged pulsing anguish of his pain. The grief of a god. I knew it then; that there was nothing he could do. Somewhere, in the thickening mist of my thoughts, I drew on the image of my children’s faces; I pulled them to the forefront of my disappearing vision and I saw us all together, once more, as we had been.

The span of a dozen, dying heartbeats. Our last embrace.

Then Dionysus pulled back from me, a look of resolution calming his features, smoothing his tortured expression into the face I had come to know so well.

He flicked his hand in a gesture I had seen before, just once. Years ago, that movement had sent my wedding crown spiralling into the sky. I’d thought it lost in the depths of the sea, but he had told me to look up into the night, where I would see it burn for eternity.

I could not hear what he said now, but it can only have been one thing.

Goodbye.

My eyes stared blankly at him, but I hoped he could hear me say it back as the blood pulsing within me hardened and froze and the last flicker of my mind petrified into stone.





EPILOGUE


I float in the inky blackness. A tiny dot of light from where you stand, but bright as a flame. I flare into life as Helios leads his chariot down below the horizon, the glimmering jewel in the centre of the crown. My thoughts are slow and ponderous now, rumbling in the deep heart of eternity, but I see the whole of life beneath me.

My sons raised, like their father before them, by gentle maenads. They are not cursed by the burden of immortal blood, they are placid and unmoved by any yearning for glory. They have gone on to lead quiet, unremarkable lives – the greatest gift that they could have been given. When their time comes, Hermes will lead them gently down to those dark shores and they will pass into Hades’ realm with no regret or hankering for legendary fame. Dionysus left Naxos to them and the maenads after he brokered his peace with Perseus and made great reparations to the Argives. The two brothers continued in rivalry, but no more blood was shed and the heat went out of their struggle for precedence. Dionysus took his seat on Mount Olympus and our island was left to the women.