She always was a hysteric.
The captain was close now. I could feel the heat of his skin. His face was rutted, cracked like old streambeds. I kept waiting for him to speak some ordinary thing, to offer thanks, ask a question. Somewhere in her palace, my sister was laughing. You have been tame your whole life, and now you will be sorry. Yes Father, yes Father—see what it gets you.
My tongue touched my lips. “Is there—” The man threw me back against the wall. My head hit the uneven stone and the room sparked. I opened my mouth to cry out the spell, but he jammed his arm against my windpipe and the sound was choked off. I could not speak. I could not breathe. I fought him, but he was stronger than I had thought he would be, or maybe I was weaker. The sudden weight of him shocked me, the greasy push of his skin on mine. My mind was still scrambled, disbelieving. With his right hand, he tore my clothes, a practiced gesture. With his left, he kept his weight against my throat. I had said there was no one on the island, but he had learned not to take chances. Or perhaps he just didn’t like screaming.
I don’t know what his men did. Watched maybe. If my lion had been there, she would have clawed down the door, but she was ash upon the winds. Outside I heard the pigs squealing. I remember what I thought, bare against the grinding stone: I am only a nymph after all, for nothing is more common among us than this.
A mortal would have fainted, but I was awake for every moment. At last, I felt the man tremble, and his arm loosened. My throat was crushed inward like a rotted log. I could not seem to move. A drop of sweat fell from his hair onto my bare chest, and began to slide. I became aware of his men speaking behind him. Is she dead? one of them was saying. She better not be dead, it’s my turn. A face loomed over the captain’s shoulder. Her eyes are open.
The captain stepped back and spat at the floor. The jellied glob quivered on the stone. The drop of sweat slid onwards, carving its slimy furrow. A sow shrieked in the yard. Convulsively, I swallowed. My throat clicked. I felt a space open in me. The sleep-spell I had been going to say was gone, dried up, I could not have cast it even if I wanted to. But I did not want to. My eyes lifted to his rutted face. Those herbs had another use, and I knew what it was. I drew breath, and spoke my word.
His eyes were muddy and uncomprehending. “What—”
He did not finish. His rib cage cracked and began to bulge. I heard the sound of flesh rupturing wetly, the pops of breaking bone. His nose ballooned from his face, and his legs shriveled like a fly sucked by a spider. He fell to all fours. He screamed, and his men screamed with him. It went on for a long time.
As it turned out, I did kill pigs that night after all.
Chapter Fifteen
I PICKED UP THE overturned benches, wiped the soaked floors. I stacked the platters and carried them to the kitchen. I had scrubbed myself in the waves with sand till the blood came through. I’d found the glob of spit on the flagstone and scrubbed that too. It did nothing. With every movement I could feel the prints of his fingers.
The wolves and lions had crept back, shadows in the dark. They lay down, pressing their faces to the floor. At last, when there was nothing else to clean, I sat before the hearth ash. I was not shaking anymore. I did not move at all. My flesh seemed to have congealed around me. My skin stretched over it like a dead thing, rubbery and vile.
It was shading to dawn, when the silver horses of the moon go to their stables. My aunt Selene’s chariot had been full all night, her light strong in the sky. By the brightness of her face I had dragged those monstrous carcasses down to the boat, struck flint, and watched the flames leap up. She would have told Helios by now. My father would appear any moment, the patriarch outraged at the insult to his child. My ceiling would creak as his shoulders pressed against it. Poor child,