OPHELIA

  MEN PART, BOW AND WEEP in an endless cycle of suffering before their salient King.
  The richest gentry gift crates of jewels so fine they hurt to look upon, finery not meant for the mortal eye. All whilst the poor men gift grain, labour, their strongest son, their fairest daughter.

  The Spartan King remains silent; perhaps displeased, perhaps pleased. I long to see his face, to read it like a book and pour myself over the pages — to see my own fate reflected back at me through soulless eyes.

But as the thousandth house is called the line hesitates, and a tense pause overcomes the air; almost suffocatingly still.

I see a little more now, though a particularly portly man with a hook nose — and chin so far receded into his neck it can hardly even be called a chin at all — still blocks my view of the throne and its occupant.

"Are you not satisfied, my King?" The voice tremors, dying almost as soon as it is born. Only silence ensues, a deafening nothingness that crawls thick down my throat. I swallow the acrid taste.

In my mind, I imagine the King a snarling beast old as time itself, well-worn from battle like my father, with a face that says what words daren't, leering down at this feeble man like a hound upon a mouse. So old and battle-hardy they say he never dies, and thus the God lore is born of half-truths and fear.

Carefully, instinctively, as if frightened that a harsh movement may set the King's fury upon us all, the gentry push in on one another. This cavernous hall is large and jutting, as if the stone as been stolen from it in the closed fist of a giant, the ceilings high and the walls angular and raw.  
  Even despite the hugeness of it I press closer to Ascella, who in turn, moves closer to Andromeda. Father moves to no one. Still as a stone, impassable, whilst we are all the running river moving around him.

I wonder if maybe the look upon the King's face is what starts the man's pleading, a mirthless myriad of self-pity and rue. And once he starts he cannot stop, words falling over themselves in an unending flow, like the bursting of a dam.

"Please, my King, I have but what I offer," The words struggle and sink, like a frightened bird feigning flight. Only now rocks weigh his wings to the earth. "My carriage was set upon by thieves at the Spartan borders — they stole my coin — demanded all I had — and stamped my grain into the ground." In his hands, he holds only a small dagger, offering it up to the King who sits upon a throne of swords. The blade is steel, the handle oak.

  " — My King!" Guards come forth and haul the man away. His shouts grow more desperate and fading with every second that passes, "I beg of you — please!" And then he is gone. I thought that now we were in the belly of the castle, the caverns below the crown, but as I hear the man's screams distant and echoing, I realise that frighteningly possibility that a whole other world may lay beneath our own. Just as the midnight fables foretold.

I picture dungeons, or perhaps a vast maze — much like the one rumoured to lay beneath the Cretan palace at Knossos. They say the Cretan King, Minos, hides a beast.
Maybe the Spartan King has a monster of his own to hide beneath these floors, or maybe he is the monster.

Numbly, I feel my feet shuffling forwards with every tribute given. Swords. Jewels. Grain. What purpose could a King possibly have for a thousand golden goblets when his hands may only hold two? — What use has he for three years worth of peasant-bred goat milk when he may drink straight from a golden teet if he pleases? What use has he for ten hundred lesser iron swords when his men yield jewel tipped steel?

He already has all of this and more — so much more than any man could ever hope to imagine. Perhaps that is what lays beneath, vast treasuries becoming of a lifetime of tributes. Is that why he hides them? Because he fears thieves?

That is when my father's voice echoes in my mind,
    "The Spartan King cares little for what you give him, only what he can take from you."

  And then all of a sudden there comes a shout.
  " — House Onasis, and its daughters."

  I look up in horrid shock. Ascella's nails dig into my palm. Father's callus hands press into my back, shoving me forwards. "Ophelia." He hisses quietly as he can, "Do not humiliate me."

One time, many years ago, not long after my ninth birthday, Ascella and I wandered too far from home when following the cold stream that ran through our land. I had begged for weeks for her to come — to sneak out with me — desperate to see where the water went. "It cannot run forever," I had said.
That winter had been especially harsh, and after hours of trekking, we eventually came to a cliff drop where we could follow the water no longer.

"See." Ascella had been weary from such a long journey. "There is nothing else to see, come, let us turn back before anyone realises we are gone."

In response I had peered over the edge, watching as the water fell then slammed into the pool below, churning up great frothing waves.

"Be careful, Ophelia —!" My sister's warning cry had come too late. The crumbling earth had shifted beneath my feet, tearing away and just like the water I began to plummet.
Even now I can remember the feeling as I hit the water all that distance below. My bones had broken with the force, the blinding cold had wrapped around my throat like a noose. Water filled my lungs and I had choked on the icy breath of it.

That is how I felt now, beneath the gelid gaze of the Spartan King.
Frozen solid and with the breath stolen from my chest, only now even Ascella could not pull me from these depths as she had when I was nine. This time, we were all destined to drown.

"My King," My father begins, swooping into a low bow. We three soon follow, but my movements feel unnatural and wooden. I can feel the scorch of eyes on me and the wicked coldness they insite. It crawls horrid down my spine and pools heavy in the marrow of my bones.
My body is a war zone, ravaged by spite, torn apart by envy. I do not know what holds me together, but I imagine it's nothing particularly pious.
"May I present to you, the daughters of house Onasis..." He hesitates as if unsure what to say next, they he rights himself quickly and says, "I gift them to you as tribute, to do with as you please."

Devastating. That is the only word I find to describe the Spartan King. I have seen him now, in all his glory, and from this moment, I will never be the same again. All the things I once loved, my mothers tree, the island sunsets, the shore — they will never be beautiful to me again. Not now. Not now I've seen him.
He is not old as I thought, time's lines do not yet mar him. Instead, he is untouched by age; scarless skin cast honeyed gold beneath the torches as if carved from the same bronze as his soldier's armour.
  Rich and Grecian, he wears a circlet of thorns upon his sable head and his chest is sinfully bare, revealing a smooth expanse that is great and bound with muscles like no man I have ever seen before. The embodiment of a King; this man looks as if he could tear the sun from the sky and rip the mountains from the earth with nothing more than his bare hands, if he so pleased.

  Strange drawings I do not recognise adorn him, their thin black lines curving to perfectly compliment every plane and pillar of his body. They tell of ships cast upon rocky shores, of blood born wars no man might survive, but the art that most catches my eye is the one partially hidden beneath the thickness of his arm. It curls around the left side of his rib cage. A foreign tree, perhaps one of this land, short and gnarled with small round fruit, far smaller than that of the lemon trees I had encountered.

  That is when I notice with a sickening feeling, the Spartan King watching me. My skin crawls, like kindling set ablaze, and all I want is to tear at it with my nails, to rid myself of the feeling of him that is somehow all too much yet entirely not enough. But I don't. I don't do anything. I stand and stare back; dumb as a frightened doe.
  His amber eyes come alight; blinding as sun on water. Something distinctly cruel finds itself at the corner of his mouth as he speaks, "And what would you have me do with them?"

  His voice tears through me, echoing in my mind long after it is gone. This man, this beast, he looks like heaven, but he sounds like hell. He is the thunder that tears through the sky, he is the lightning strike that sets cities ablaze. He is everything they say he is and more.

"They are yours. You may do as you wish." My father says, as if we are little more than cattle, "Though, if you would accept such counsel, I would suggest marriage — a gift to those three men who best serve you." As if hinting, my father casts a wayward glance towards the head of the King's soldiers, adorned in all his scarlet finery. "As my daughters, they are high born —,"

He is interrupted, a mighty disrespect if only it had not been done by anyone other than the almighty King himself. "— they are mortal?" He asks, as if we may be anything else.

"They are."

The Spartan King laughs, a great, rich, golden sound, like the shudder of a deadly wave off a ship's hull. I think perhaps he is mad, or maybe he truly is living in the delusion that he may be more than mortal. Madness makes a man, Pala once told me.
  "What use have I for such fleeting affection? You gift them to me as burdens?" The chill has long gone. Now I feel as of I am on fire. My skin too hot, my face too red. " — To gift yourself three fewer mouthes to feed?" The King leans forward a little upon his throne of broken swords, tawny eyes finding me as they narrow, "Or do you simply grow tired of such plain faces?"

It hurts. But it is a pain I have never known before, one I cannot quite trace.

"They have talent, my King." My father's voice is almost pleading now, as he waves an arm to my flower-blue sister. Her face is ashen as the rest. "My eldest, Andromeda, she is a gifted wordsmith — her peoms bring tears to all who lay eyes upon them — and her voice, one worthy of the Gods."

The silence of the King only spurs my father's ramblings. Little does he know the quiet held no intrigue, instead only mocking — like allowing a madman to shout in the streets of stars and their prophecies. The King's amusement is evident on his handsome face as he allows my father to continue to disgrace himself.

"Ascella is the best harpist House Onasis has ever known, and if only you gift her an easel and oils she may cast your godly likeness upon any clay or mural you wish." Ascella shrinks back beneath the King's gaze.

"— And what of her?" Asks the King; his face an unreadable mess of emotions, hallowed by the torch light then limned into stark relief by the flicker.

"Ophelia —," My father begins only to find he cannot finish, for what could he say? Though he may have given me life, he knows nothing more of me than my name and my insolence. We do not speak, we do not linger alone. He does not know me like he knows my sisters.

"— She has a spirit unlike no other." Ascella's sudden voice surprises me most of all, the least of all sounds I expect to hear, "Fiercely loyal if only to her own detriment."

The Spartan King laughs again, "So she is useless, you mean to say." Then his violent eyes turn predatory and he's looking at me, only not at all in the greedy way a man will usually look at a woman, but cruel, scrutinising every flaw. "Not overly tall, or strong... And not particularly pretty."

"— Perhaps we have only yet to uncover her talent, my King." This time it is Andromeda who intersects, another surprise, "One which, if given the correct kindling could far surpass our own."

His wolffish grin only grows, saccharine fuel set alight by a mortal disobedience he has never experienced before. We are but a game to him, a play thing for him to use until whatever fate finds us first, he tires or we fall apart. "Your daughters appear to lack discipline, Onasis."