Beautiful Scylla, dainty-doe Scylla, Scylla with her viper heart. Why had she done such a thing? It was not love, I had seen the sneer in her eyes when she spoke of his flippers. Perhaps it was because she loved my sister and brother, who scorned me. Perhaps it was because her father was a nothing river, and her mother a shark-faced sea-nymph, and she liked the thought of taking something from the daughter of the sun.
It did not matter. All I knew was that I hated her. For I was like any dull ass who has ever loved someone who loved another. I thought: if only she were gone, it would change everything.
I left my father’s halls. It was the time between the sun’s setting and my pale aunt’s rise. There was no one to see me. I gathered those flowers of true being and brought them to the cove where it was said Scylla bathed each day. I broke their stems and emptied their white sap drop by drop into the waters. She would not be able to hide her adder malice anymore. All her ugliness would be revealed. Her eyebrows would thicken, her hair would turn dull, and her nose would grow long and snouted. The halls would echo with her furious screams and the great gods would come to whip me, but I would welcome them, for every lash upon my skin would be only further proof to Glaucos of my love.
Chapter Six
NO FURIES CAME FOR me that night. None came the next morning either, or all that afternoon. By dusk I went to find my mother at her mirror.
“Where is Father?”
“Gone straight to Oceanos. The feast is there.” She wrinkled her nose, her pink tongue stuck between her teeth. “Your feet are filthy. Can you not at least wash them?”
I did not wash them. I did not want to wait another moment. What if Scylla was at the banquet, lounging in Glaucos’ lap? What if they were married already? What if the sap had not worked?
It is strange now, to remember how I worried that.
The halls were even more crowded than usual, stinking of the same rose oil every nymph insisted was her special charm. I could not see my father, but my aunt Selene was there. She stood at the center of a clot of upturned faces, a mother and her baby birds, waiting to be crammed.
“You must understand, I only went to look because the water was so roiled up. I thought perhaps it was some sort of…meeting. You know how Scylla is.”
I felt the breath stop in my chest. My cousins were snickering and cutting their eyes at each other. Whatever comes, I thought, do not show a thing.
“But she was flailing very strangely, like some sort of drowning cat. Then—I cannot say it.”
She pressed her silvery hand to her mouth. It was a lovely gesture. Everything about my aunt was lovely. Her husband was a beautiful shepherd enchanted with ageless sleep, dreaming of her for eternity.
“A leg,” she said. “A hideous leg. Like a squid’s, boneless and covered in slime. It burst from her belly, and another burst beside it, and more and more, until there were twelve all dangling from her.”
My fingertips stung faintly where the sap had leaked.
“That was only the beginning,” Selene said. “She was bucking, her shoulders writhing. Her skin turned gray and her neck began to stretch. From it tore five new heads, each filled with gaping teeth.”
My cousins gasped, but the sound was distant, like far-off waves. It felt impossible to picture the horror Selene described. To make myself believe: I did that.
“And all the while, she was baying and howling, barking like some wild pack of dogs. It was a relief when she finally dove beneath the waves.”
As I had squeezed those flowers into Scylla’s cove, I had not wondered how my cousins would take it, those who were Scylla’s sisters and aunts and brothers and lovers. If I had thought of it, I would have said that Scylla was their darling, and that when the Furies came for me, they would have shouted loudest of all to see my blood. But now when I looked around me, all I saw were faces bright as whetted blades. They clung to each other, crowing. I wish I’d seen it! Can you imagine?
“Tell it again,” an uncle shouted, and my cousins cried out their agreement.
My aunt smiled. Her curving lips made a crescent like herself in the sky. She told it again: the legs, the necks, the teeth.
My cousins’ voices swarmed up to the ceiling.
You know she’s lain with half the halls.
I’m glad I never let her have me. And one of the river-gods’ voices, rising over alclass="underline" Of course she barks. She always was a bitch!
Shrieking laughter clawed at my ears. I saw a river-god who had sworn he would fight Glaucos over her crying with mirth. Scylla’s sister pretended to howl like a dog. Even my grandparents had come to listen, smiling at the crowd’s edge. Oceanos said something in Tethys’ ear. I could not hear it, but I had watched him for half an eternity, I knew the movements of his lips. Good riddance.
Beside me an uncle was shouting, Tell it again! This time my aunt only rolled her pearly eyes. He smelled like squids, and anyway, it was past time for the feast. The gods wafted to their couches. The cups were poured, the ambrosia passed. Their lips grew red with wine, their faces shone like jewels. Their laughter crackled around me.
I knew that electric pleasure, I thought. I had seen it before, in another dark hall.
The doors opened and Glaucos stepped through, his trident in his hand. His hair was greener than ever, fanned out like a lion’s mane. I saw the joy leap in my cousins’ eyes, heard their hiss of excitement. Here was more sport. They would tell him of his love’s transformation, crack his face like an egg and laugh at what ran out.
But before they could say anything, my father was there, striding over to pull him aside.
My cousins sank back on sour elbows. Spoilsport Helios, ruining their fun. No matter, Perse would get it out of him later, or Selene. They lifted their goblets and went back to their pleasures.
I followed after Glaucos. I do not know how I dared, except that all my mind was filled up with a gray wash like churning waves. I stood outside the room where my father had drawn them.
I heard Glaucos’ low voice: “Can she not be changed back?”
Every god-born knows that answer from their swaddles. “No,” my father said. “No god may undo what is done by the Fates or another god. Yet these halls have a thousand beauties, each ripe as the next. Look to them instead.”
I waited. I still hoped Glaucos would think of me. I would have married him in a moment. But I found myself hoping for another thing too, which I would not have believed the day before: that he would weep all the salt in his veins for Scylla’s return, holding fast to her as his one, true love.
“I understand,” Glaucos said. “It is a shame, but as you say there are others.”
A soft metal ping rang out. He was flicking the tines of his trident. “Nereus’ youngest is fair,” he said. “What is her name? Thetis?”
My father clicked his tongue. “Too salted for my taste.”
“Well,” Glaucos said. “Thank you for your excellent counsel. I will look to it.”
They walked right by me. My father took his golden place beside my grandfather. Glaucos made his way to the purple couches. He looked up at something a river-god said and laughed. It is the last memory I have of his face, his teeth bright as pearls in the torchlight, his skin stained blue.
In years to come, he would take my father’s advice indeed. He lay with a thousand nymphs, siring children with green hair and tails, well loved by fishermen, for often they filled their nets. I would see them sometimes, sporting like dolphins in the deepest crests. They never came in to shore.