OPHELIA

  TIME EBBS AND FLOWS like waves on rocks, and yet the Spartan King does not speak again. He accepts his accolades with nothing but stern silence, a few he turns away — to which the men are dragged off to the same outlandish fate as my father.
   I do not allow myself to wonder what exactly that fate may be, though not out of angst or some innate sense of self-preservation. My heart does not hurt to think of him as it does my mother. No, instead I will not think of it because I do not care. Whatever cruel or poetic fate finds him I do not doubt it will be well deserved.

  All it takes is to think of my sister's calf, Demaris, the singular thing she loved and how he slaughtered it in front of her and had the pelt hung above his bed — and all subservient sympathy is lost.
I think of Andromeda, practically born into wedlock, conditioned to obedience. A product of a misguided father; forged and faithful in his image.

In reality, there was never any hope for us. We were born without choice, without chance. Congenitally cursed and born to die, for we are not the Gods we worship.

  Instead, we are the vision of our father, three times over and three times removed. Each and every representative of the very worst parts of him. The eldest ill-fated with paternal pride, sharp to cruelty, and yet, cowardly.
The next was damned soft with kindness, a supple underbelly to the iron-clad armour of her ignorance. Ascella wanted the world, and so, her affliction was her ambition, for she was born into the body of a woman.

Perhaps our femininity was our first and worst curse of all.

   I do not have to think long to know full-heartedly that hatred is, and will always be, my hamartia. At times it rules me, blinds me just as well as it may any man. I am argumentative, and at a moment's breath, hostile.
It is not a favourable trait in a woman, or so I've been told, which hardly seems fair when it is so praised in men. They war and fight and tear one another to the bone, and still, they are desired, their worth does not dwindle depending on their heart or tongue.

Men are born great, but women are made. That is what I have learned.
   And I am my father's daughter; damned to despise.

  My knees are bloodless and raw from kneeling so long on the hard stone. Hours pass that feel like days. Time bleeds painfully, like an old wound that weeps only when provoked.
  The stream of gentry thins, and eventually, dies. There is a final woman, a hag as old as tree roots and with a face as gnarled as the bark, bent hunched with the weighted age she bears.

  "What is your name?" Barks Sir Deimos when it appears that hers is not scrawled on his scroll. An unnamed nomad, come to the King on the day of the reaping, and for what purpose? Surely she has nothing to give?

  My insides clench with unease as she ignores Sir Deimos, a mighty disrespect, and instead she offers up a palm that shakes — but not with fear, for this crone is far too old to fear something as simple death.
  At first her had appears empty, and though she may not fear her own fate, I fear for having to witness another soul dragged beneath these palace floors.
But then, something crawls out from under her sleeve, coiling around her wrist and pooling in her palm like a jet black rope.
  The snake, though only slight, rears its fine head, a forked tongue flickering and hissing as its beady eyes come upon the Spartan King. Somehow, even animals know him to be a sight worthy to behold.

The old woman smiles, a crooked, loose-lipped thing, "A sacrifice for the serpent King." And it is then that I see her free hand slipping the dagger from her robe. The guards tense, shifting in their stations, but the King raises his palm in command and they still. Not in the least bit afraid, he sits forwards on the throne; watching with lurid fixation.

In one fluid movement, the hag slides the dagger across her palm, cutting the snake in half and tearing her flesh down to the bone. I see the gleam of it, ghostly white and sickening.
  The old woman does not flinch, her smile only grows as her black-red blood spills onto the marble floors, raining down upon the poor creature that rives in the agony of its disembowelled half-life, stuck in that wicked purgatory somewhere between life and death.

  Surely she is mad. Surely the King will not accept this tribute, not when from dawn till dusk he's been gifted bounties of pirate's gold, wines from the world over and years of healthy crop harvests.
  What use has a King for dead things and blood?

  But to my surprise his handsome face cracks, all snarling teeth and wolfish smile as he says, "Welcome home, Enyo. Where are your sisters?"

The crone casts a grin of her own, sharp-toothed and eyes bulging as if they may fall out with the slightest strain, "Oh my great King, I many more tales to tell since you were a boy. Perhaps in exchange for livery I may lend you a few."

"Then consider it done." Says the King; faithfully as if he is talking to an old friend, and perhaps he is.

The pool of blood from her palm is still steadily growing and yet the old woman, Enyo, does not flinch. Instead she flexes it, causing a fresh rain of dark blood to crawl down her wrists.

  Andromeda shifts uncomfortably and Ascella pales, never one for gore. I sit solidly as a lead weight; transfixed.

  "Thank you, my King. You are just as merciful as I remember." Enyo moves quick, a snap of her fingers, a flash of her hand. And the blood is gone, her wound too, the skin knitting itself back together before my eyes. It takes restraint not to gawp at the display — and I tell myself it's just this foreign heat, messing with my mind, that surely I must have imagined such a thing.

  But there, at her feet, is the half-severed body of the snake.

  The King laughs, for he knows just as well as I that he is not merciful in the least. Nonetheless he enjoys her quip, entertaining the premise as if it is true. "Why, my dear Enyo, what beautiful brown eyes you have. Wherever did you find them? Last I recall, you and your sisters were sharing one."

  "Stole them, my King, for I find corpses have no use for eyes." She says; sickly sweet and truthful, "Shall I tell you the tale of Perseus the bastard child?"

  All of a sudden the bulging of her eyes makes sense if what the hag says is true. Bile rises in my throat and I swallow the bitter taste down.
  Sickness finds me as it does my sisters; my skin is pale and sea-washed to a hideous shade of green.

  "Though I fear I may already know it," Says this Northern King with roguish charm, "I would hear it still a thousand times over from a tongue as filthy wicked as yours."

  Enyo steps forwards with a face twisted with the most violent thoughts of glee, "Oh but my darling King, you do not know the full tale! — Only what the slayer himself decreed to be told!" Animation takes over her, becomes her. "Great King, like yourself the bastard Perseus was born of Zeus, but, he was born bathed in the blood of the princess, Danaë. That made him mightier than any mortal man should dare to be. Only, Danaë had been imprisoned to prevent such a dalliance when Zeus came to her in a hale of golden rain, and so, in punishment for her nymphomanic ways, her father had her and her newborn son locked into a chest, and the chest — thrown into the ocean."

  "Danaë's father feared the prophecy." The King affirms for her, though much of the joy seems to have drained from his face. "And so, cursed the child and murdered the mother."

"Yes, wise King, except they did not die there in that watery grave — but that is just the start. I shall skip the middle though, if you don't mind, only I find no glory in Perseus' senseless slayings. Just know the babe survived."

  A nod of his fine, dark head and the crone continues, "Many years after, the bastard Perseus came to we three sisters — I'm sure you know the tale..."

  "He came asking for the Gorgon."

  " — Medusa, my King. Her name was Medusa." Never in my life did I think I would live to see a crone chide a crown, and even less for him to allow it. But he does, an unspoken understanding echoing between them.
  Enyo continues, "She was a woman too once, until she was defiled and raped and cursed for crimes that were not her own — by Gods no different than yourself. And when at last that filthy liar Perseus came about there was little asking to it! — When we would not give up her location he stole our eye and threw it into the lake Tritonis." She waves a crooked finger, "Not at all returning it like he told the scribes." The world waits, hanging breathlessly off her every word. Even time itself stops to listen to this creature's tale; as moments slow and all is silent. "One after another my sisters cast themselves into the lake in search; for without our eye were blind, you see. And they drowned there in the dark water where I would not follow."

  Even in fables, this new life is corrupt and rife with death. The longer I stay the more it lingers, watching, waiting. No fate here seems to end quietly. How long until it is my turn? Acella's? Andromeda's?
This is the waiting game that the poets speak of, the invisible, careless slipping of moments until none are left and our small and insignificant threads of life are to be cut short.

  Her tongue darts out like that of a snake to damp her lips, a hideous, wet, flickering thing. "After the beheading of Medusa, Perseus returned home — swollen with pride, leaving oceans of blood and salt in his wake. He used Medusa's decapitated head to turn all those who dared spite him into stone. And in the end, he died just as he had lived — like a coward... My only regret is that I was too late to do it myself. Time took him, and it cost me a lifetime of wandering blind to find him curled in his bed, stiff with death, and a dagger still clutched in his withered hand."

  She pauses, lost in reminiscence, satisfaction etched onto her ancient face. "I like to think that all those years he lived in fear of the day I would finally find him." There is a peacefulness to her now as she continues. All these years she has been searching and now, at last, she may rest. "For once upon a time the bastard child Perseus stole my sight, so in death, I stole his." Enyo spits on the marble floor. A contempt that would cost her life if aimed at the King, but there is no doubt that it is not. "Good riddance. May he blunder sightless through the underworld and drown in the damn Styx."

"Well," Says the King at last, cocking his head like a curious hound. "That tale is most certainly far removed from the writings."
From this angle, this close — knelt at his foot, I dare not fully look upon him, terrified of capturing his gaze again. If I close my eyes I can feel it still; the blistering, unending warmth of it.

Is he calling her a liar?

  A candle-lit ray of warmest gold catches in the reflection of his circlet, and though there is no endless queue of gentry left to hold their breaths at the fate of the wench, there is still tension about the air. I endure it now, a horridly static, buzzing thing. In the darkest nadir of my chest it finds a home, forcing its way in and kicking the breath from my lungs as I await whatever it is this man may say. In no less than a single word he may have her killed, dashed upon rocks or disembowelled like the corpse of the snake she stands upon.

  "What are you suggesting, dear King?" Bristles the hag. Perhaps death is her wish after all.

  He smirks as he calls, "Sir Deimos," And though the fate pending is not my own, my heart pounds all the same. The soldier steps forwards at once, hand poised at the scarlet hilt of his sword, ready to dispatch, "Yes, my King?"

  "See to it that every telling of the great hero Perseus is destroyed, every clay smashed, and any theatron that still preaches his might, burned to the ground." He says, doggish in his sudden sincerity, "And then, after we have feasted you will take Enyo to the library in the north tower. See to it the tale is scribed correctly this time, just as she tells it and not a word different."

  I do not realise how long I have been holding my breath until I let it go. Relief is a cruelly icy shock to my veins, and beside me, Ascella's hand slides into mine. It says all the words she dare not, the fear, the reassurance, the hope.
It says that maybe, just maybe, in light of this small mercy, there may be light after all.

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QOTD- what's your favourite telling in Greek mythology? Share it in the comments so we may all learn something new!