Ghost Queen in the House of Love

16. Onia

After our quarrel, Cadmus' absences lengthen. One would think he'd want to be closer if he was truly concerned about Circe's intentions. But then, if he suspects her of ruining me, perhaps he thinks it best to leave me to my own devices, like Pandora with the box. Best to let me open it because there are hundreds of stories of women who suffer because they fall.

Should I fall, I wonder if he'll throw me in the tower with a tug at his lips, a glimmer in his eyes that says, silly girl, I told you so.

What scares me is that I feel both so distant and close to falling, of plummeting out of the favor I grew with sweet smiles and meek words, and part of me doesn't care. Let me fall.

I cannot. But I dream, ridiculously, of racing to the coast, finding a boat on the white sand, and sailing to my own little island. Especially when I intend court the first time I cannot reasonably hide my runes, and the people stare and whisper. While such markings might be seen as crass, their words don't have the timber of judgment.

Slowly, I think, they are fearing what I might become, now that my chine bone peeks out.

Nowadays, I am no longer as wan as I was. My skin is beginning to reclaim the deep olive it once was, back when I wasn't resigned to a tower or the court alone.

A stola of deep, steely gray with silver floral patterns on a ruffled piece of velvet that falls diagonally from the breast. I'm reminded of the doves Mother let flock around her palace of roses and seashells, cooing on the veranda among garlands of blood-red anemones. The doves who would, in the hundreds, guide her shimmering chariot.

The very same gray birds who softly landed her on the ruined ashes of Troy, the only remaining towers the pillars of smoke rising. And the stacks of broken bodies. Crowned by bones, fire, and ash, Mother set her dainty, porcelain feet on the crumbling bones to admire her work. The doves plucked the salt of ash and bones like they were seeds.

She must've smiled with pride when she came across the caved in ribs of the people who tried to flee, pressed together heart-to-heart. fingers brushing palms, their ashes mixed together, like Adonis and Patroclus when they died.

My stomach turns. This is the price of love. Perhaps it is better to be alone.

Mother was as at home on the battlefield, the fruits of her passion, as she was strewn on the high-piled couch.

And me? Too cold and passionless to be her good daughter, too docile to make Ares proud.

I don't know where my home is.

My home must be here. Even if I could roam like many gods and goddesses before me, don a crown of vines

I did nothing to earn this crown, except be born. Even Zeus, god that he is, had to fight his own father. Then again, I suppose all these years, I have been fighting, every day a battle to prove that I am not a mad queen, that the world I see truly exists.

I palm the fabric, admiring its color. Though I think of Mother's doves, this color is too dark. It's wholly me. So different from the whites, golds, and Olympus-blues. Circe is the night sky, the rivers leading to the Underworld, and I'm an evening storm.

In the distance, a high piping nose weaves through the air. As imperious as gryphons seem, their calls for a mate are deceptively soft.

I grow tired of this bedroom, so I tell Kora to let Circe know she may meet me at the tower.

As I walk the palace path alone, I pause. As wind rustles my hair, the scent of lemons from one of the many gardens passes through. How strange it is, that I should meet someone by myself with a hoplite with a spear and shield coming with me. Or even Stratigos Telesilla, the poet-warrior of Argos who leads them.