6. Why be a half-finished poem in some forgotten poet's story, when one can be an odyssey in and of herself, part magic, part villain, part Goddess, part lover.
-Nikita Gill, "Circe"
The snakes around my neck bother me again. Two glittering serpent heads with scales that glimmer silver-gold and eyes that shine sapphire. With the rest of the necklace inside my skin, they protrude above my collarbone and ache.
For the second time this week, blood and pus dribbles on my pillow, collecting in yellow-brown stains. As if the snakes leaked venom. And Cadmus, my husband, sweeping his burnished curls to the side, complains.
"This is disgusting," he says as my handmaiden, Kora, waits at the door, hands clasped over her moon-blue stola. "We must find someone who can remedy this." She has been with me for six years, one of the few to have stayed.
Hair splayed on the pillow, crusted with the open wounds, I say to him. "Yes, my king." If he thinks this inconveniences him, I wonder what he must think of my discomfort. If he thinks of it at all.
When I touch the skin around the protruding serpent heads, I grimace. Swollen and tender. In the body-length washroom mirror, I stare at the skin, red and bruised. Kora undresses me and applies a greasy unguent where it hurts. My skin is soured goat milk with golden ripples dipping in and out, from one shoulder to the other. The snake eyes gleam, burning topazes.
A chiton or stola won't do.
Kora helps me into the curved tub in the center of the golden room, where silver laurels cling to marble pillars. The tub is formed in such a way that the place where I set my head rises far above the rim on the other side.
I'm careful not to lean too much into the porcelain. "I need something like a shawl, to fasten around this." I hover my thumb where the snakes are irritating my skin. After my uneasy sleep, I say, "A chlamys."
The handmaiden bows her head, her auburn hair arranged in a long braid. "Yes, of course. But that is a man's cloak, my lady."
"An epiblema," I say. "Hm. That's it."
After I wash my face with olive oil and honey, Kora helps me out of the bath and dries me. She sprays my body with rose perfume; Aphrodite's blood and Eros' kiss gave the rose its intoxicating aroma. As I sit to the side on a white stool by the vanity, she threads marjoram perfume in my hair, the color of cornsilk with some of the strands silver, and presses palm oil to my chest. She draws my hair into a spiral atop my head, cages it in pins of ivory and bone, and covers it in a net of pearls.
And soon, I stand to be dressed in a silver chiton with a long swath of cloth swooping down; it is dappled with golden lilies and roses. The crown on my head, shaped like a wreath of myrtle leaves, is heavier than usual.
My skin, wan, is pocked red on my cheeks from the warmth of the room. Once, it was a deep olive. But my face is unlined and stopped changing when I entered my twenties. Kora lines my eye with kohl and dusts the lids with gold.
Court is uneventful, petitions over land or the rightful ownership of swine and goats, and the early afternoon feast begins. The dining room, lined with laurel-topped pillars, is a highly arched room with dancing nymphs and dragons and battles epigraphed on the ceiling. Besides the gods' chairs above everyone, all the seating is made of silver. I'm thankful for the cushions.
The air smells thick with marjoram and mint. And, of course, the eight-course meal, more restrained than usual. A boar's head, fish pies, boiled ducks and hares, roasted chickens, and honeyed barley cakes, all seasoned with thyme, rosemary, and olive oil.
As I sit at the head of the table, alongside the preening nobility, Cadmus comes close to my side, donned in a laurel crown of myrtle leaves and a dove-gray tunic. His golden skin is radiant. I often wonder how beautiful Adonis must've been, if he was the most perfect man alive. He sits with me, and I find I don't have much of an appetite. My stomach has curdled.
Thousands of years ago, Zeus and Athena awarded me to King Cadmus in a feast much like this. When I was eighteen. When I became a wife. When I received an enchanted necklace as a wedding gift.
When my life fell apart.
I was promised to him when my first moonflux happened, when a girl is considered woman enough to marry. I was twelve. But, mired in the grease and pus and blood of girlhood, I begged Mother, Aphrodite, to let me wait. She rolled her eyes but agreed, and Father was too ardently pursuing wars to care.
Besides my reluctance, I worried, too, for Mother's husband, not my father, was as jealous and vengeful of his own blood, Hera. The lives of bastards, gods and demigods, often don't fare better than mortals. Especially women. At least men can go on quests and be heroes. They can reclaim and rewrite their tragedies.
"Don't look so glum," he says, leaning close, hand squeezing the space above my elbow, his breath hot on my ear. He smells of spiced wine and almond blossoms, a half-empty kylix already in one hand. "The Olympian Mother is here. We can't have your pouting offend her."
We are honored every now and again to have the gods visit and attend our court and eat at our feasts. And because they often disguise themselves, we can never be sure where they are.
On Earth, I am queen. As designated by Zeus himself, as Cadmus is king. But in the sky, Olympus, he and Hera reign supreme. And we must always supplicate ourselves to their whims. We do not invite the gods; that would assume they need our permission. As such, when they visit, they sit at a separate table, atop a dais carpeted in silks.
Obliging my duties, I pardon myself and, drawn into myself, step lightly up the dais where Hera and her attendants, nymphs in stolas the blue of a clear midday sky, dine. I must cross the entire distance of the platform to reach her, and I must keep a respectable distance. Along the table, besides the honeyed lamb and the pies, are rows of golden decanters, brimming with sweet wine and nectar. Once, my stomach clenched at the mundane scent of honeyed wine, but I've grown numb to it.
As I ease toward the head of the table, Hera catches me in the corner of her eye.
Her black hair looks vibrant and blue in the flames of the hanging lamps, fueled by petrel fat. It is braided along her hairline, settled before an embossed, golden diadem with lilies and pomegranates patterned on the metal, a sparkling stone of lapis lazuli in the center. From its back erupts a silver, glittering veil.
Her ruffled chiton is a deep teal, like the part of the ocean where the shallows end. Golden rings line her throat with a plumage or brilliant turquoise peacock feathers set behind her hair, the feather patterns framing the back of her collar like eyes.
Her eyes are a deep brown and shrewd, narrowing a fraction.
Assuring my voice is light as air, I say to her, "Hello, Queen Hera. I hope the food and wine are to your liking."
Hera regards me with a cool stare, hands primly in her lap. "I fear I'm not well."
My eyes widen. "Oh, my lady, what is wrong? I will remedy it." I can predict her response before it comes out of her mouth.
Hera says, "I cannot stand to be around whoreseed, such as yourself." Yes, indeed. I'm evidence that Aphrodite was never faithful to her son, Hephaestus, who she loathes and loves in equal strides.
I bow my head. "Oh. Why, of course. I'm terribly sorry. I'll make myself sparse."
Her eyes flicker to my collarbone. "How is that necklace my son and I made fitting you? I hope it isn't too tight." It doesn't escape my sense of irony, however suppressed, that the goddess of motherhood helped jealous Hephaestus fashion the necklace that cursed all my children to suffer and die. And blackened my womb to soon give way to miscarriages and barrenness.
Before my parts shriveled, I had a son and four daughters.
Semele, my youngest. How she'd curl close to me during thunderstorms and strum the lyre. Her blonde hair caught red in the sunlight. Beautiful. Hopeful. Dead.
Slewn by Hera when Zeus slept with her, and the mother-goddess learned of it by taking the form of a trusted friend. My daughter, betrayed. Struck by lightning. A pillar of ash with only a fetus left in the crumbling pile.
My youngest daughter, always willing to talk, hold my hand, and brush my hair, was my closest companion. Even when I never fed any of them, even when having the king's children was more of an obligation than a desire. Unlike my other children, Semele didn't grow tired and frustrated with my deep melancholia.
My eyes sting, and my cheeks and throat flush with shame.
I cannot say anything. I cannot weep.
Steeling myself, hands clasped before me, I offer a placid smile. "Like all the gifts of the gods, it's perfect. No mortal could hope to create a necklace even half as splendid." This is my lot in life. Queen Harmonia, bringing peace to vanquish discord. In return, I live well enough, though I wish I could do more. Cadmus prefers that I remain inside the palace.
"That's wonderful." As one of the attendants feeds her, she daintily accepts a plump, red grape into her mouth. "Really, I would hope your madness has abated by now. How much feces did you manage to throw on the walls?"
"None, my lady. It was never like that." Centuries of melancholia and apathy. Something doing a pendulum swing to panic and paranoia. Not dignified, but not theatrical. Not the crown of rue a doomed maiden wears or the stage play madmen used for japes.
That disappoints her. "I see. Ah, I remember, it was urine with you, wasn't it?" She offers a starry smile. "I don't want to keep you from your husband. Please, Mad Queen, go enjoy your festivities."
I prickle. Mad Queen Harmonia. Ever since Hephaestus made the twin serpent necklace, shaped like a horseshoe, bearing hard around my nape like a vise, that's all I am. Pathetic. Irrational. Sent for my own good to the westernmost tower of this palace to sulk and weep, only allowed to embroider or do anything under steady watch. Fed by maids, given few books, until my sanctuary deepened my living dreams. I lived in my own unreality, but at least I was easily controlled in a gilded cage. Not much has changed. Except my physical pain with the necklace has worsened, but the bite keeps me tethered to this world.
I swallow the lump in my throat. If I don't, I will cry.
Or worse, become angry. Ugly. Truly mad. Nothing is more hideous than a queen who loses her composure, slips off the pedestal.
Hera pretends I'm no longer there when I say, "Please, give King Zeus my regards." When he isn't busy with one of his mistresses.
What an awful thought, I chide myself as I stroll away. I shouldn't be so bitter.
I pity her. She's the goddess of marriage, raped by her brother Zeus and used and humiliated by him. When she tried to revolt, she was further debased. He's all she has, but she doesn't have him at all. No one cared about her pain, the trauma he inflicted on her, the whiplash his kindness and charm do to the mind, so why should she care about others' anguish? Every day, I fight to not become embittered.
When the wound around the left serpent head leaks, it burns my fingers when I touch the suppurations. As if the snakes molder my skin with venom, letting me rot as a living cadaver should.
I should be grateful. I am grateful.
***