Winning Chapters

I glanced over my shoulder at the security guard's seat by the door. It was still empty. I’d waited over an hour to have the artwork to myself. I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes until the gallery closed. Winter darkness made the high narrow windows into black slits. A freezing Monday night when, even in London, most people would be hurrying home to curl up warm in front of the television. The smell of chalk dust and pine in the vast, white room reminded me of school classrooms. I forced myself to focus.

From a distance, the life-sized human figures formed a confusing mass of powder-pink fuzzy limbs. I moved forward and sat on the bench in front of it. Glanced over my shoulder again. Still empty. The information card on the wall behind the exhibit read The Act by Amanda Ashenby. It must have taken the silly cow months to create the wool felt for such a large display. How did she hide it from me? I reached into my book bag, feeling for the plastic handles of the kitchen shears. The cheapest ones in the shop, but still twelve pounds I couldn’t afford.

The felt woman was naked, on all fours, one knee raised, like a dog cocking its leg for a piss. I thought of Nelson, my father's sturdy little Jack Russell, but this was different. The felt woman's foot curled at a strange angle, toes splayed outwards. A discombobulated cluster of tiny limbs at full stretch. An unnatural gap between her big toe and smaller digits, like a chimpanzee. The word prehensile hung in my mind. Evolution stopped humans from swinging on branches or eating with their feet millions of years ago. The softness of the wool must have made it hard to stiffen thinner parts of the body. Perhaps she put wiring inside. A white lace thong hung loose from the woman's skinny ankle. No artifice there; it was probably bought at Primark, the label cut out. We bought Christmas pyjamas together at Primark, laughing. Did she slip it into her bag at the same time?

My fury made every detail crystal clear. The felt woman’s neck was long and narrow, stretching back. A curved extension to her long, arching back. Red string hair fell messily onto her pale shoulders. My teeth clenched tighter. Face upwards, dark irises fixed on the ceiling. The texture of the wool and lack of apparent pupils made them devoid of expression. Her scarlet mouth was open in a grimace, teeth bared like an angry horse. They, too, showed wanton chaos, splaying out like her toes, with wool gaps between them. A parody of me. God, I must have given her the idea. She always cracked up when I put on my posh voice and horse face. I zipped my lips shut, holding back rising hysteria. The model’s firm, rounded breasts had protruding nipples, red as glacé cherries on an iced bun. I wanted to reach out and touch them. Registered the sign below saying, PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE ART. Art! I pulled back my hand, pushing it under my thigh, then pulled it out again, irritated by my immediate inclination to obey.

I forced my eyes to move to the male figure behind her. He was upright, on his knees, also naked. Pale, hairless head. 'Pecker Head'. Wasn’t that what she called her art tutor? Was he her muse? When I was a teen, I thought that being hirsute was an essential part of having sex. It worried me that my own arms and legs were so pale and hairless. The man and woman were hairy in the illustrations in The Joy of Sex on my parents’ bookshelf. Probably a product of the 1970s fashion style when it was published. Why did she choose to make him bald? That was the kind of question my course tutor would ask, and we would all scrabble for some bullshit answer. Rembrandt portrayed saints as bald; perhaps he considered it a sign of holiness. Van Gogh’s last, depressed self-portrait showed him as bald. But God knows why Amanda did it. Perhaps it was just easier to make his pate smooth? No, his ears must have taken hours of workmanship when she could have covered them with a thatch of simple wool hair. Antihelix, concha and lobe were all defined in detail. She’d clearly worked for so many hours on this. Hours she hid from me. Fucking bitch!

I pulled the shears from my bag and turned to the felt man. His eyes were slits, looking down; forehead creased in concentration, brows slanted. As if he were angry. His pink, fuzzy chest was bare, but wiry hairs protruded from around his rosy nipples. I pictured Amanda teasing the wool into a delicate black curl between her fingers, then plunging a sharp metal spike into the fleshy part, pinning it firmly. Her betrayal jabbed me in the guts. It hurt. The felt man's hands pushed down on her lower back. I forced my eyes to look down. His erect penis protruded at ninety degrees from his body. She’d mixed blue into the baby pink flesh wool. A swollen, purple baton, its tip resting on the lip of the vagina. Hideously graphic, caught in the act of penetration. Of course, lightbulb moment, The Act. Not subtle. Not clever. Tightly woven, oversized testes hung beneath. I thought of the great, loose sacks I had seen under rams in the fields around my parents' home, like leather satchels. Sweetbreads, my father called them. I felt a tingle of desire and wanted to press hard on my pudenda, safely tucked inside serviceable cotton knickers. They were positively matronly compared to the strip of nylon dangling in front of me.

‘Well, are you going to do it?’ The deep voice smashed through my thoughts, scattering them. I jumped violently, letting out a squawk. The shears clattered to the floor as my hands feebly clutched at the air in front of me. The man reached down and picked them up. Not the security guard; no, he wasn’t in uniform. I hadn’t heard his footsteps. How long had he been watching me? A hot itch on my neck and cheeks meant my anxiety splotches were starting to show. I wanted to get up and run to the door, but fear, or the stranglehold of politeness, rooted me to the bench. In my peripheral vision, I saw him sit down, placing the shears on the bench between us.

‘I can see the likeness. No wonder you’re angry.’ His voice was deep, a hint of a Midlands accent. He opened an exhibition programme. ‘Apparently, it's an artistic investigation into gender roles, demonstrating man's lust for war.’ He paused. ‘It looks like straightforward, old-fashioned pornography to me. Its unique selling point is that it's made from British wool.' He chuckled, turning to me, making me look at him. Brown eyes, clean-shaven, square-cut jaw. His shaggy-cut hair made me think of the illustration man in The Joy of Sex again. I tried to push it out of my mind, knowing my cheeks were already scarlet.

‘Fine craftsmanship, mind you. I take it you don’t like it?’ He nodded at the shears.

I pressed my lips together, glowering at him, willing him to go away so I could get on with it.

He shifted, making himself comfortable, and read from the programme again. ‘It represents vanitas and beauty, death and rebirth. In essence, mortality.’ He paused. ‘Do you agree?’ He looked at me intently, eyebrows raised, head slightly tilted, studying my face. Expecting an answer.

It was like being with my tutor, and I grappled for something to say, then stopped myself. Why should I talk to him? Vanitas. God, her pretensions! She wouldn’t have known what that meant if I hadn’t told her. I hated her with every cell in my body.

He must have seen it in my face, and he laughed. A rich sound that reverberated around the room. 'I think vanitas means the inevitability of death, the pointlessness of life.'

A facsimile of my life now. ‘Yes, I know.’ I kept my voice flat.

‘Surely you have more to say than that? You’re about to desecrate it!’

‘Desecrate isn’t the right word. There’s nothing holy about it.’ My voice was harsh with bitterness.

‘You think sex is ugly?’ He smiled. Faint crow’s feet around his eyes showed he was older than me. They made him look gentler than I had at first thought. Almost kind.

‘Ah, is it sex with men you find ugly?’ He raised his eyebrow.

‘What the fuck?’ I jumped to my feet, glaring at him.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Hey, just kidding. I’m Jim.’ He reached out his hand. I looked at it momentarily, then took it, weakly responding to his firm shake. Why wouldn’t he just go away? I noticed his straight shoulders, like a Greek statue. I tried to stop myself from imagining him on his knees, like the artwork, penis erect, behind me. Hoped he couldn't read my thoughts in my face. He was distracting me, and my anger started to ebb away. I sat down again.

How would I know? I’d only done 'the act' once. Not like this at all. A dark fumbling chaos behind the sofa at my friend Neave’s sixth-form party. I awkwardly agreed to let James, who had already had everyone else in our class by then, add me to the altar of his ego. It had stung, but I wanted my virginity done with. It was embarrassing and messy. Luckily, everyone was so drunk that no one noticed, and James skulked away, leaving me feeling dirty. But I’d never seen anything like this artwork in the flesh. Never had the opportunity. Or perhaps I’d avoided it. Didn't want to actually go out with any of the stupid boys at school. I certainly didn’t fancy them. At Uni, the History of Art class was comprised of women and two gay men. I hadn’t met any heterosexual men there at all. Then I met Amanda, and she made me happy, until she did this.

His hand was still wrapped around mine, and I felt its dry warmth. I snatched mine away just as he asked my name.

‘Genevieve.’ Why did I tell him? Why did I always feel I had to do what people expected of me?

‘Well, Genevieve. You’re running out of time. Better get on with it.’

Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. The security guard must be coming back. My heart crashed against my chest. It was now or never.

I snatched up the kitchen shears and lunged forward. Grasping the penis, I closed them around it and snipped. The wool was tough, and I tried sawing, then shifted it into the bone cutter notch. That did the job. It came away so light in my hand.

‘Come on, quick.’ Jim grabbed my book bag and took my elbow, hustling me towards the door. ‘Hide it.’ He whispered.

I looked down stupidly at the penis, then shoved it into the pocket of my ripped jeans. Walked fast with him to the door. We passed the security guard.

‘Good night. Great exhibition,’ Jim said to him, smiling confidently. He tugged me into a faster walk, yanking me through a door onto the staircase. Time seemed to slow down. I noticed the chipped paint on the wall and the pull of the rubber edges on the stairs against my boots as we clattered down to ground level. I stumbled as we burst through the fire door into the entrance hall. I pulled up the hood on my coat to cover my tell-tale hair.

A uniformed staff member pointed at the door. ‘We’re closing.’

As we passed her, I pulled forward, wanting to run, but he kept a tight hold of my arm. We marched through the open glass doors onto the concrete riverside walk. I looked out at the mysterious, swirling waters of the Thames and beyond, rows of lit windows on the great, grey buildings on the other side. Glancing from left to right, I wondered where to run. My shoulder yanked as he pulled me in a fast walk away from the gallery. I wrestled my arm away from him and glanced up at his face. As I caught his eye, he laughed, revealing straight, white teeth, and I laughed, too, exhilarated, and broke into a run.

‘This way,’ he said, racing past me. I followed him up a narrow flight of stairs.

A chill wind spat icy shards of rain in my face, but I was on a high, immune to the elements. My hand reached again for the lump in my pocket. I did it! Jim led me away from the river to a smart little tapas bar. It was half empty but warm, and salsa music chirped cheerfully as we made our way to a table in the corner. I tried to slow my frantic breathing and smelled sweet paprika and garlic as we hung our coats on the backs of the chairs and sat opposite each other.

'Corona beer, please,' he said to the server. He only sounded a little out of breath. 'And you? Perhaps a Sangria? I nodded.

As we waited for the drinks, I felt the adrenaline seep away. I became aware that he was a complete stranger. Why had he helped me? I looked at the door. Would they have noticed yet? Were there security cameras in the gallery? Of course there were. But were they directed at Amanda’s work? I didn’t even check. What an idiot. When the waiter brought my wine, I glugged the first half fast, planning to leave. I started to get up.

‘Wait. I’m your partner in crime,’ he said.

I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again. He could report me.

‘From the beginning.’ He smiled, leaning forward, and I found myself talking, telling him my life story.

'My Mum's the stern one. Tough on what's right and wrong, if you know what I mean.' I described the rolling countryside where I grew up and the muddy walks my father dragged me on. My parents' Christian zeal and oppressive requirement for me to be helpful and involved in village life.

‘The other kids teased me for being square.' I tried to forget what else they called me. The pale, red-haired lump of lard that I was. Weirdly, when I thought about that place, it always appeared in my mind devoid of colour, even though I knew that the grass was verdant, the autumnal woods gold and umber, and the skies in the summer cornflower blue, when it wasn’t raining, of course. My memories were grey, with a sepia tinge, like old photographs. Somewhere I didn’t want to return.

I can remember my precise words. 'To be honest, I'm really enjoying the freedom of living in London.' It was an obvious fabrication. The back of my throat was dry and sticky. No freedom. Just a barrage of assignments, writing about art I hated. Dying a little bit more every day. Then Amanda, telling me I was beautiful. Constantly sketching me and showing me her huge, splashy canvases. She brought colour into my life. Made me feel alive and wanted. Loved, even. Until her debut exhibition. I looked up and realised I had stopped speaking for a long time. He must have seen the desolation on my face.

Jim spoke so easily, filling the awkward pauses I created. He described himself as ‘a civil engineer between projects’. I was grateful for the breathing space while my mind raced through scenarios. Police crashed through my bedsit door. Dad’s disappointed face. Mum’s anger.

'I've just finished overseeing mending a dam in the reservoirs of South Wales. Today, I had a meeting about possible new postings.'

‘What will you do next?’ My elbow was on the table, and I rested my chin on my hand. Noticed his eyebrows were like shapely cornrows. Textured blond, rose, brown. Nose straight, perfectly round nostrils flaring out on either side.

'I'm hoping to snare a big one. A site manager post. Probably overseas, somewhere remote where more experienced guys are less keen to go. They prefer if you’re married, though.’ His hopeful expression dropped, and a small, worried frown appeared on his forehead.

I felt a little lift in my chest, though. To know he wasn’t married.

‘Why would they prefer that?’ I asked.

‘I guess married couples are more stable in remote and difficult locations. Too many guys have got culture shock and gone doolally in the past.'

Perhaps he wouldn’t get the job and would stick around here a bit longer. I realised that I hoped he would. Maybe we’d meet again. Stupid thought. Do not pass go. Go directly to jail. What was I going to do? The long, hard lump in my pocket pressed against my thigh. I had to get rid of the evidence, but it was pointless. They’d find me on the security cameras somewhere. When Amanda saw, she’d know it was me and tell them. ‘I think you’ll like it when you see it,’ she had told me. That duplicitous smile replayed again in my mind. Why did she do it?

Groping for a topic to keep the conversation going, I asked, ‘Why were you at the gallery today? Art and engineering don’t usually mix.’

'I read about it somewhere. As the company's office was near the gallery, I thought I'd come and see what all the fuss was about.'

I had seen the headlines. Pornography or Art? Erotic British Wool. Prudes threaten Modern Art Censorship. It occurred to me that he hadn’t answered my question. Fair enough, I hadn’t answered his.

‘Are you enjoying studying modern art?’ His question seemed innocent, but I saw amusement behind his eyes.

'History of Art, actually,' I said. 'I loved art at school and thought about doing a foundation year. But in the end, another four years at college seemed too long. I'm in my second year at uni. To be honest, I hate it.' I sighed. 'In sixth form, it was fun. I liked exploring the spiritual symbolism in the old Holbeins and church art. All that piety, God's forgiveness and such. I enjoyed hunting out more cerebral symbols in the super realistic Dutch masters, too.’

‘Like what?’

‘Dogs mean loyalty, mirrors truth, wealth and affluence shown through food and drink extravagantly laid out on tables. I love those paintings. Pale women dressed in silks and pearls.’ I stopped, feeling foolish. ‘Sorry, I’m talking too much.’

'No, you're not. A Titian-haired beauty like you can say what she likes.'

Was he teasing me? ‘Ginger Minge’ they called me at school. Something hardened in my heart when I found out what ‘minge’ meant. It was probably why I never let the boys near me, except that vile James, just that once. Even when I grew taller, stretched out and got a waist and breasts. The boys looked at me with respect then, but I didn’t trust them. They’d all been in on a horrible joke on me for too long. My mind moved to Amanda. Naked and beautiful on the bed. Always sketching. Smudges of charcoal on the pillow. Pain squeezed tight around my throat.

He continued, perhaps aware that I was suffering. Keeping things light. 'What art do you like best?'

‘Picasso has to be my favourite, but I love the Impressionists too. Renoir, Monet, Manet.’

His face lit up. ‘Who can forget Manet’s Le dejeuner sur l’herbe?’ His French pronunciation sounded authentic to my ears.

I smiled back, then remembered the painting more clearly, and felt my lips straighten primly. ‘But don’t you think it’s sexist? Men fully dressed, one woman half-dressed, the other completely naked on the picnic blanket?’

He didn’t hesitate. 'But she's the one looking straight out at the audience as if she chose to be nude. She’s in control. Don't you think it's empowering?' His full lips curled upwards at the sides.

I’d heard that view before and would normally argue the point. Still, I remained silent as my mind twitched with worry. I watched his face smooth, and the tip of his tongue emerge, moistening his lips. God, he was beautiful! I wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Not soft like Amanda’s cushioned lips.

‘You were telling me about your studies.’ He prompted.

'I thought it would get even more interesting at degree level, looking at modern art, but it's all so pretentious. People are just making up the bullshit around art. It leaves me cold like the talk is more important than the artwork. There's so much blarney around. I hate it.'

He chuckled, that rich sound again. 'You're an individualist. Are you going to see it through?'

‘I suppose I'll have to. I'm in my second year. I've got a massive student loan that needs something to show for it. I'm wasting my time, though. I mean, what job will I find? A curator at a gallery, maybe. But I don't even enjoy art anymore.'

‘I noticed.’ He let out a short laugh. ‘You still haven’t told me.’

My cheeks burned. I couldn’t tell him. ‘It’s a woman thing.’ I mustered.

‘A lover?’

I frowned. No. He may have helped me, but I didn’t have to tell him everything.

He flagged the server and ordered another round. He hadn’t asked if I wanted another one, but I let it go. I knew I should leave right now, but I didn’t know where to go, didn’t want to go. I was in a kind of purgatory. A strange, gentle space between two hells. The before and after.

This was how I had pictured being in London, before I went there. Before I even applied for university. Going to lively, trendy places. Meeting attractive people, talking adult talk, and being a woman of the world. I raised my glass, and he held out his bottle to clink against it.

‘Having religious parents must have meant you spent a lot of time in church?’ he said. I nodded, wilting slightly. Feeling my stomach knot from a lifetime of people laughing at me for it.

‘Are you religious?’ he asked.

It wasn't something to be debated at home, and Dad always said it was rude to discuss religion or politics at the table. Old school.

‘I’m not sure; keeping my options open, I suppose.’ I giggled. It came out more like a strangled burp, which I hurried on from. ‘Are you?’

He paused, looking over my shoulder, his eyes glazed as if searching inside his head for the answer. 'We should look at the world objectively, fearlessly; try to understand things as a part of nature.' He seemed so sure of himself.

‘But what about Christian charity; doing to others what you would have them do to you?’ I asked.

His nostrils flared, and his amber eyes looked directly into mine. I felt a little explosion inside, a high-pitched intensification of the air around us. My heartbeat quickened, dancing a little jig.

He carried on, apparently unaffected. ‘I don’t believe human decency is derived from religion; it precedes it.’

I needed to think about that. Make sense of it. The wine was confusing me, making me feel hot all over. My wistful imagination playing tricks on me. If I stayed any longer, I’d say something stupid. I got to my feet and fumbled my coat from the chair. ‘I must go.’

He leapt up. ‘I’ll walk with you.’

‘No, no. Definitely no.’ I stepped back, putting on my coat. It was time to face the music. ‘I’ve got to write an essay.’

‘About The Act?' A smile played around his lips. ‘Really, you think you can just carry on as normal? You must have seen the cameras? Even if they didn’t catch you in the act, or should I say cutting the act, you’ll be on them.’ He chuckled loudly at his own joke, and I looked at him with hatred. He didn’t stop, though. ‘You’ll be found out, you know. I suppose I will too. Your accomplice.’

I knew he was right, and I imagined getting on a train heading for Dover. Could I get on the new Channel Tunnel away to Calais, Paris, but then where? I thought of the fifty-three pounds left in my bank account. I fumbled with a glove half-falling out of my coat pocket.

‘Where will you go?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘I have an idea,’ he said.

Joint Third Place

Sirensong

Caroline Fleishauer

Chapter 1

The lightning licked at my wings, thunder crashed around me, and amid it all I threw my head back and laughed at the sky. Power danced along the length of my wings, singeing my feathers into blackening curls. I could feel the pain as they burned. Relished it, that renewed sense of feeling.

All of my life I had dreamed of immortality. Of a life stretched long and thin as a spider’s silk, delicate and yet unbreakable. Unchanging, even as the years dragged at the skin and hunched the shoulders of the mortals far below, wearing them down until they turned to dust. A rock against the tides of time, stalwart, ever watchful.

An empty wish.

Against my back, the lightning crackled.

Below me, the boat was tossed by the maelstrom driven by the storm. I could see men scuttling along the deck, small as ants, their cries to one another swallowed in the screeching of the wind. All except one man, whose voice bellowed out with supernatural strength, a man who did not run alongside the ship’s railing but remained still, lashed to the mainsail, even as his muscles strained against his bonds.

My feathers lit, the ensuing flames greedily consuming each barb as a wildfire decimates a forest grove. But I no longer felt its heat. I had eyes only for the man below. The man who formed what had once been my name on his lips and hurled it like a discus to the sky with so much force it nearly tumbled me from my lofty vantage point among the thunderheads.

How long it had been since I had heard that name. Since I had been anything but a monster. I curled my tongue around the sounds of it, felt them form in my mouth, tasting of sunshine and pomegranates and childhood. Foreign and yet familiar, long forgotten.

I looked to the fire cresting along my wings, nearly at my shoulders. Soon it would consume me. I wondered, as if from far away, if I would turn to ashes and rain from the sky, or just cease to be. How little of me there was left to burn.

I looked again to the ship below, to the heavens above, where dark storm clouds roiled. I imagined I could see her eyes, dark and challenging. And yet full sadness, deep and lonely. The wind whistled in my ears, softer now, bringing with it the sound of bells, clear and sweet.

I pulled my blazing wings to my sides, and dove.

Sunbeams danced across my eyelids, the world behind them blazing white. I scrunched my eyes shut even tighter, then opened them wide to see rainbows skirting at the edges of my vision. Then, as quickly as they had appeared, the colors faded into the cloud-smeared expanse of sky that stretched onwards far overhead.

On her back beside me, Persephone stretched up a hand, pointing. “What about that one?”

My vision refocused as I followed her finger towards a cloud made up of multiple jagged peaks.

“A mountain?” I offered.

“Obviously,” Persephone sighed, unimpressed. “But which one? And don’t say Mount Olympus. That’s too easy, and besides, it’s not nearly big enough.”

I said nothing. We had no mountains on Anthemusa, just rocky outcroppings jutting out over the sea. And I knew little of the lands beyond the tidelines, only what Demeter brought back with her from her visits to the world of mortals.

Even as I searched for a response, the cloud shifted, and the mountain blurred into nothing more than a mass of puffy whiteness.

“What mountain did you see?” I asked Persephone. She did not answer. I did not expect her to. Persephone, like me, had never called anywhere but this island home.

“Tartarus.”

I turned my neck to face her. Persephone knew better to speak of the Underworld here, let alone name its infamous mountain, within whose hollowed depths the most tortured of souls resided. Demeter had long ago forbidden any mention of the dark realm far beneath the earth. But Persephone’s face was a mask, already directed back towards the sky.

“Look there!” She pointed again. This time, I did not follow where she pointed.

Persephone looked down at me, her eyes glittering. “Parthenope, look. It’s a ship!”

I shifted upwards onto my elbows, squinting against the slanted rays of the sun. Persephone’s finger cast a long stretch of shadow upon her face.

“I can’t see it.”

Persephone took my hand in hers, curling my fingers until there was only one extended. With it, she outlined the contours of the cloud, speaking of the mast and the bow, until the vessel took shape before my eyes. The steady curve of the hull, the unfurled sails. Freeing my hand from Persephone’s, I sat up and back on my knees, reaching out as if to grasp the cloud-ship in both my hands, to pluck it from the sky, my fingers guided by something beyond thought. And then, even as I encircled the ship with my cupped hands, a gust of wind blew it apart and it dissolved into nothingness, my hands still reaching out towards that which they could not hold.

When I could no longer find even a trace of the lines that had formed the cloud-ship, I turned back to Persephone. Her eyes, green as new buds and unnaturally bright, searched my face.

“I tire of this,” I said, bringing up a hand to hide my face, in the guise of shielding it from the sun. I wondered if Persephone could see the blush creeping across my cheeks, hear the heightened beating of my heart on account of my own foolishness. Even looking away I could feel the force of those eyes on me, unblinking, as hot and revealing as a ray of direct sunlight lancing through the clouds.

She rose, and I felt coolness on my cheek where her eyes had seemed to sear through me only moments before.

“You’re right. We’ve been laying here long enough. Besides, I want to check on the Asphodelus — there is a new cluster of them blooming near the oak grove. And two canaries near there have a clutch of eggs that should be hatching into chicks soon.”

My breath came out as a sigh, grateful for Persephone’s willingness to leave the clouds behind.

I nodded my assent, finding my feet as Persephone strode off in the direction of the line of trees that demarked the edge of the meadow. But even as her long strides put distance between us, I paused again to look towards the sky. Though I knew both cloud and ship were long gone, floated away on the heady summertime breeze to cast their shade on some other spit of land, I searched for them, their loss leaving me bereft though I could not explain why. As if in answer, out on the horizon line, the light shifted, revealing what looked like a sail spread across the sky, a sail made of something more substantial than wisps of cloud. Without knowing why, I turned and fled, running after Persephone, and pushing all thought of ships and sails from my mind.

Beneath the shade of the heavy boughs the air was still. Sun-shafts pierced through the greenery to the mossy floor, straight as one of Apollo’s arrows, casting dapples of light across Persephone’s back and hair ahead of me. It struck me how tall she had gotten, the length of her strides as she moved through the undergrowth.

More and more Persephone’s body belied her transition to adulthood. Her face was thinning, losing its childish roundness, and the color the sun spread across her cheeks could no longer be thought of as cherubic but exquisite. Soft curves had begun to swell beneath the light linen of her chiton, which seemed to cling to her body more closely these days though arranged and pinned just the same. Her golden hair tumbled down her back, so fine that when the light made it sparkle to the point of whiteness the strands appeared as the gossamer threads of spider silk. And, praise the gods, she was at last growing into that nose of hers, her strongest feature but one that had dominated her face since childhood.

Even more changed than her appearance was the aura that had shifted around Persephone. I could see it even now, a subtle sheen of light pulsing around her, enveloping her in a soft golden glow. The daughter of Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, Persephone was ethereal in her own right, but her extended girlhood had lulled me into believing she would remain as such forever. I had only ever known Persephone as a girl, a playmate, a friend. A second sister, despite Demeter’s grudging misgivings about her daughter growing so attached to her handmaidens. This woman I followed now, at the touch of whose feet new grass sprang from the earth, was a stranger to me.

And yet, even as the melancholy of these thoughts brushed against me, Persephone bent down, running her fingers through the dirt. When she turned to me, her fingers were stained black with the soil, and a soft grin lit up her face.

“Pomegranate seeds have taken root here. Look, the seedlings have already begun to sprout.” She cupped one of the young plants in her hand, fingers just brushing its budding leaves, and I laughed out loud. There was not another in the world who loved pomegranates as much as Persephone. She would pick their seeds out one by one, unceasing even as her nails and hands were stained dark with juice. Persephone, not knowing the cause of my mirth, laughed along with me, which only made my own come harder until our shared joy rang out among the trees until they seemed to shake with a shared happiness. Persephone, for all that she must one day be, would always be the little girl covered in dirt with rocks in her pockets, and there was something beautiful in that knowledge that I could hold close, gratefully, in my secret heart.

Our laughter faded and Persephone’s face grew contemplative.

“The trees are so lovely, aren’t they? It’s always so peaceful here.”

The breeze tousled the curls framing her face as if in answer.

“Mother plans to present me to Zeus at the Harvest Moon.”

I started, whirling to her as if slapped.

“The Harvest Moon? But that’s mere days away! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew you would be upset. And I didn’t want our last days together to be tinged with sadness.” Persephone fingered the pomegranate leaves, her eyes not meeting mine.

A sense of panic bubbled within my chest. Persephone couldn’t leave. This was her home, our home. Had been since Demeter first brought Ligeia and me, born of a Muse and relinquished to the goddess, to Anthemusa in her golden chariot nearly twenty years ago. We had all been children together, grown up together. It had never occurred to me that our halcyon days could end.

“You can’t!” I blurted.

When Persephone looked up from the dirt, her eyes were sad.

“I have no choice.”

“But – you’re a goddess.”

Persephone’s face twisted into a scowl and her voice sharpened into flint. “You think that matters? You think I have a choice?”

I froze. Never before had I heard such animosity from her lips. Such bitterness.

She laughed, the mirthless susurration of leaves dead and dying.

“Don’t look so surprised, Parthenope. You couldn’t know. A mortal couldn’t understand.”

Her words blazed through me, a white-hot shard of lightning. A chasm opened between us, one that had always been there but was rarely acknowledged.

I took a step back, away from the golden-haired girl with flashing eyes whose teeth were bared in a mocking scowl.

As I did so, the twisted mask disappeared, replaced again with Persephone’s sweet face, now full of hurt and sorrow in equal measure.

“Parthenope,” she whispered. “Forgive me.”

But the truth crashed down around me, as if pouring from a vessel that could not be stoppered. Persephone was a goddess, the daughter of Demeter. Of course she would leave Anthemusa to take her place by her mother’s side among the gods. The truth of it rang in my bones, a truth I must have always known but buried deep, allowing the fantasy of this life to continue on, unending.

Persephone took both of my hands in hers.

“Must you go?” I said, lip quivering.

The pity on her face was more than I could bear. I pulled free from her embrace.

“Why now?” I asked, my voice high and tight.

“For Demeter’s honor.”

I turned back to Persephone, questioning. For though the words were innocuous enough, there was again a hardness to them, anger bubbling like lava beneath their thin, veiled surface.

But even as I looked at her, Persephone did not see me, her eyes cast unseeing into the lengthening shadows of the wood.

“Do you think they have trees like this on Mount Olympus? Woods where the birds sing and the leaves turn golden in the sun and –” She trailed off, eyes staring off at something only she could see.

“I am sure,” I said around the lump in my throat, voice soft, “Olympus has everything you could wish for. Anything a goddess could wish for.”

Her eyes shot to me, sharp as arrow points, and I wondered if I had said something wrong.

“I will be nothing up there.” She finally looked at me, the force of her gaze nearly causing me to raise a hand to shield my face. “A minor goddess only. Good for small entertainments, to be trotted out at Demeter’s whim and fancy. A prize, trapped in a cage of glass until the cosmos burn out to nothing.”

“But Demeter –”

“Cares nothing for me.” The words were shell-shards on rock, tumbled by the tide.

Persephone whirled to me, the golden light around her pulsing forward. “Do you know why she has kept me hidden? Trapped on this gods-forgotten island?” Persephone began pacing between the trees. Around us, I felt the tree shiver, shrinking back from her anger. “It is so she can reveal me, can present me to Zeus at the opportune moment, to shock him into submission to advantage her own interests. It is not for me. It was never for me.”

As she walked, she seemed to grow larger. But at the last words, her voice cracked, and it was as if she shrank before me, growing even smaller than she had been before. A wilted flower.

“How do you know this?”

“I heard her.” Persephone’s voice was wracked with bitterness. “Making plans with her nymphs during her visit before the great plantings began.” She stilled, and all of the woods held its breath.

“Olympus will be no more than a beautiful prison. Without trees, without sunshine. Without life.” She gestured to the woods around her. “And I will be no more than a shadow cast by a body framed by the sun. The first new-born goddess in a millennium. But nothing more substantial.” She looked up at me through dark lashes, sparkling with tears. “You cannot understand. You do not know how lucky, you are, Parthenope.”

Without knowing why, I felt anger bloom in my chest as if struck by an arrow.

“Yes,” I snarled back, “so lucky. To face a truncated life alone, without anyone or anything I love. Without power, without purpose. You do not know what it is to be caged, goddess.”

It was Persephone’s turn to look as if she had been struck. But, like poison from a wound, the cruel words kept bubbling from my mouth, unable to be stopped.

“You have everything. Beauty, a mother who loves you, a future. Power beyond my wildest dreamings. Immortality. And what do I have? I am a mortal. I am trapped in a body wedded to time from which there is no escape. I can’t make flowers grow or sing so sweetly I can make the gods cry. I cannot leave this island but nor am I welcome before the gilded gates of Olympus. I can do nothing except sit and brush your hair and run your bath and sit here in this damn meadow looking up at the sky with you, finding shapes in the clouds and feeling the world pressing down on me as my life slips through my fingers. But no,” I seethed, “I can’t understand. Not at all.”

My chest heaved and my breathing was ragged, the only sound in the wood as my rage simmered between us. Even the birds had gone quiet.

Persephone’s eyes softened and she took a step towards me. I showed her my back, crossing my arms across my chest. Holding together the hole that her words had blown through me.

I felt her hand on my shoulder, the gentle pressure of her fingers.

“Parthenope,” she began. “I’m sorry.”

I glared at the bark of the great oak, tracing a whorl around and around, feeling the burning in my eyes of the tears I would not allow to fall.

“I’m sorry,” Persephone said again. “I did not think.”

“A goddess has that luxury,” I said, twisting my words to hide the hurt beneath them.

She turned me towards her. This close, the top of my head just brushed against her chin.

I then I could hold back no longer. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks, and I pressed myself to her, clutching her against me as I gave shape to my grief.

“I don’t want anything to change,” I sobbed. “I don’t want to lose you.” Then, “I wish I was immortal. Then we would never be separated.”

Persephone gently pulled back and looked down at me, her face as serious as stone.

“Do not mistake immortality for freedom, Parthenope. The gods are as tightly bound as mortals. Change is inevitable whether or not one is free of the bonds of time. Do not wish for that which will bring you nothing but grief.”

“You only say that because you will never have to fear death. You will not watch yourself age, your beauty fading and your strength failing, until your body turns to dust.”

“No, I will not. But I will have to watch those I love succumb to such a fate, be taken from me forever, and be powerless to stop it.”

Neither of us spoke again, for there was nothing more to say. Persephone just wrapped her arms around me once more. She pulled me close, pressing her cheek against mine. I breathed deeply of her scent, wildflowers and sunshine and rich earth, until my chest had ceased to heave.

We stayed that way, holding one another, until the shadows stretched longer than the beams of light reaching down between the leafy branches.

Persephone pulled away and looked me up and down.

“Come,” she said, “let us run.”

I have been told that my mother once said that before I could walk, I ran. As a doddering toddler, I fought to rise from the ground, determined to stand on my own two legs. And that one day, leaving me on my hands and knees by the riverside as she sang with the river nymphs, my mother turned to find me lurching away from her, legs windmilling as I felt what was to run for the first time, towards the bank where the river met the sea. It had been Ligeia who caught me up and held me back, even as I wriggled in her tight child’s grip.

It was Ligeia who told me this story, laughing with music in her mouth as she did so. As she did, I could see my sister, round-cheeked with copper ringlets curling about her face as she restrained me. But my mother I could not picture, her face as wet clay, my memory becoming more smeared and shapeless the harder I tried to define its edges.

I ran now. Fast and hard, the saltwater in my blood spilling across my brow, carrying the torrent of my thoughts away from me, replacing them with nothing more than the thudding of my heart and feet and blood mingling together into one impenetrable wall of sound. Our ragged breaths, mine and Persephone’s, tore through the silence of the wood, a jagged slash that, if I found it, would be a door, a portal to somewhere, anywhere else. The woods around me became a blur as I pushed harder, almost believing that if I ran faster, kept running, I could run out of my skin, out of the mortal life tying me to the earth, and be carried upward, airborne, into the realm of the gods.

I nearly slammed into Persephone ahead of me as she slid to a sudden stop.

“What,” I spluttered, gasping for breath. The feeling of weightlessness was gone now, and I was left hot and heavy, irrevocably tied to the weight my own mortality, dragging me back to earth.

“Look,” Persephone breathed, the words also coming between heavy inhalations. “Down there.” She pointed to a small patch of white flowers at her feet. Though no sunlight reached them, they seemed to glow with their own interior light. My previous thoughts were forgotten as I drank in the sight of the flowers.

“What are they?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before.”

Curious. Persephone knew these woods better than the contours of her own face. Every tree, flowering plant, leafy stalk – Persephone could name them all, down to how much sunlight and water each needed to thrive. She knew where every plant grew on the island, too, could find each when Ligeia requested this or that to replenish her medicinal stock.

“You mean you’ve never seen them here?” I asked now.

“I mean that I’ve never seen them, ever.” Persephone paused, her words arching up with reverence and wonder. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

I glanced sidelong at my Persephone. Her bright green eyes grew wider as she squatted down to lean closer to the mysterious plants. Though their pale petals luminesced like fallen stars, I could not see their reflection in the depths of her eyes.

My scalp tingled. I put a hand on Persephone’s shoulder.

“Persephone,” I said, “if you’ve never seen these before, perhaps we should leave them alone. We don’t know where they came from, after all.”

“Nonsense,” she said, shrugging off my hand and crouching beside the small patch of flowers. “Every living thing is a gift from the gods. If these have appeared here, they must want me to see them.” She cupped a bloom and brought it to her face, the delicate stem seeming to reach up towards her. “Smell them, aren’t they heavenly?”

As she spoke, the flowers’ scent seemed to fill the air around us, thick and heady as undiluted oils. Cloying, almost. I batted my eyelashes, as if the aroma was as thick smoke, clouding my vision as well as my throat. But Persephone did not seem bothered by the cloud of scent that now enveloped us.

“It’s quite strong.”

As Persephone sat back on her heels, the stem of the flower in her hands remained taut, its yellow eye seeming to follow every minutia of her movements. I blinked, attempting to clear my mind. Surely, I was imagining things.

But a sense of foreboding thumped in the back of my mind, a quiet but persistent knock.

“But who,” I asked, nearly coughing as the flowers’ perfume filled my mouth, leaving it feeling coated with powder. “Would send these to you?” Who knows that you’re here?

Persephone’s eyes cleared, narrowing a fraction. Then a dreamy smile broke out across her face, the apples of her cheeks growing pink with pleasure.

“Persephone?”

“It must be Demeter, surely.” Beneath her languid words was a torrid excitement,

“She has never –”

“Hush,” Persephone silenced me. As she did so, I could have sworn one of the blooms turned towards me. For the first time, I saw through the delicate white petals to the flower’s center, glaring and yellow as the midday sun. An unlidded eye, unblinking, assessing.

Shivers shot down my arms, despite the heat that still lingered in the air.

“Come, Persephone. Ligeia will be wondering where we’ve gotten to.”

“Hmm,” Persephone’s hummed absently. Her eyes were back on the flowers, her face within a hands-length of the waiting petals, which appeared to unfurl larger beneath the force of her gaze. Grabbing at her arm, I shook her.

Startled, she blinked, and as her eyes cleared she shot me a glare. “You don’t have to be so rough, Parthenope. I’m only looking.” “Come on,” I urged. “We need to get back. Ligeia will worry if we’re away too much longer. The sun is already setting.”

It was true. The shadows around us had grown deeper as the grove had stolen our focus. Rays of golden light no longer dappled the ground and between the leaves of the canopy streaks of orange lit up the sky, signaling the sun’s final panoply of color before the day gave way to night. But despite the growing twilight, the flowers seemed to glow ever brighter.

Reluctantly, Persephone rose to her feet, brushing the dark soil from the folds of her chiton. Her eyes were trained on the flowers at her feet, the desire to stay with them written clearly across her face. The scent of them was even stronger now, tickling my throat and giving me the urge to cough. The sense of wrongness in the clearing grew, my skin itching with it. I slipped my arm through Persephone’s and turned back towards the way we had run, wishing the edge of the woods wasn’t so far away. Even as she allowed me to pull her away, Persephone’s head turned back, unable to look away from the flowers. And though I led the Goddess of Spring from the grove as quickly as I was able, it was long before I could shake the sense of countless accusatory eyes turned towards me, boring into my back.