She named some minor river-lord in the Peloponnese. I had heard of him, perhaps met him once, but he had never sat in my father’s halls.
“Why send you to me?”
She looked at me as if I were the greatest idiot she had ever met. “You are a daughter of Helios.”
How could I have forgotten what it was like among the lesser gods? The desperate clawing for any advantage. Even disgraced, I still had the blood of the sun in my veins, which made me a desirable mistress. Indeed, for such as her father, my disgrace would be encouragement, lowering me enough that he dared to reach up.
“Why were you punished?”
“I fell in love with a mortal,” she said. “A noble shepherd. My father disapproved and now I must do a year’s penance.”
I considered her. Her back was straight, her eyes up. She showed no fear, not of me, not of my wolves and lions. And her father disapproved of her.
“Sit,” I said. “Be welcome.”
She sat, but her mouth was puckered as if she sucked an unripe olive. She looked around with distaste. When I offered her food, she turned her head aside like a sulky baby. When I tried to speak to her, she folded her arms and pursed her lips. They only opened to voice her complaints: about the smell of the dyes bubbling on the stove, the lion hairs on the rugs, even Daedalus’ loom. And for all her protestations about serving, she did not offer to carry a single dish.
There is no need to be surprised, I told myself. She is a nymph, which means a dry well. “Go home, then,” I said, “if you are so miserable. I release you from your sentence.”
“You cannot. The great gods have commanded me. There is nothing you can do to release me. I am staying a year.”
It should have upset her, but she was smirking. Preening as if in victory before a crowd. I watched. When she had spoken of the gods exiling her, she had showed no anger, and no grief either. She took their authority as natural, irresistible, like the movements of the spheres. But I was a nymph like her, and an exile too, a daughter of a greater father, yes, but with no husband and dirty fingers and oddly dressed hair. It put me in her reach, she reasoned. So I was the one she would fight.
You are being foolish. I am not your enemy, and pulling faces is no real power. They have convinced you—But even as the words formed in my mouth, I let them go. It would be like Persian to her. She would not understand it, not in a thousand years. And I was done giving lessons.
I leaned forward and spoke the language she understood. “Here is how it will go, Alke. I will not hear you. I will not smell your rose oil or find your hairs about my house. You will feed yourself, care for yourself, and if you cause me a moment’s more trouble, I will turn you into a blindworm and drop you in the sea for the fish.”
Her smirks were wiped away. She blanched and pressed her fingers to her mouth and fled. After that she kept to herself as I had ordered. But word had spread among the gods that Aiaia was a good place to send difficult daughters. A dryad arrived who had fled her intended husband. Two stone-faced oreads followed, exiled from their mountains. Now whenever I tried to cast a spell, all I could hear was rattling bracelets. As I worked at the loom, they flashed in and out of the corners of my vision. They whispered and rustled from every corner. There was always someone leaning moon-faced over a pool when I wanted to swim. As I passed, their snickering laughter washed against my heels. I would not live that way again. Not on Aiaia.
I went to the clearing and called Hermes. He came, smiling already. “So? How do you like your new handmaids?”
“I do not,” I said. “Go to my father and see how they can be taken away.”
I feared he might object to being sent on an errand, but it was too amusing for him to miss. When he came back he said, “What did you expect? Your father is delighted. He says it’s only right that his high blood is served by lesser divinities. He will encourage more fathers to send their daughters.”