A swim, a rock pool, the sun in the sky: the simplest ingredients for a happy day, and yet completely impossible. For the thousandth time, I cursed Athena. I cursed Poseidon, I cursed the neighbours back home by the edge of Night, all of whom had made my life such a misery that the only option had been to leave. Was I to spend the rest of my life hiding in a cave?
‘I can’t come,’ I said, the familiar ache rising inside me, my snakes drooping on my shoulders like forlorn ropes. I stroked little Echo’s head in an attempt to comfort her. Callisto, a bigger snake, deep magenta in colour and quite majestic when she wanted to be, wriggled in irritation at my mood. It’s not my fault, I said to her silently. Blame Poseidon, blame Athena. But don’t blame me.
Callisto hissed, as if to say, These days, you’re big enough and ugly enough to ignore the caprices of a goddess.
That might be true, I hissed back. But inside, I’m still just me.
‘Why can’t you come?’ said Perseus.
‘I’m busy.’
‘You’re busy?’
‘Cooking. Cleaning. That sort of thing.’
‘Can’t your sisters do that for the day?’
‘They go and catch the food. I stay here.’
‘But why? You can’t stay in that cave all day.’
‘I don’t know how to explain this, Perseus. I’ve … never had to.’
‘So try me. Your sisters bully you, is that it?’
‘No, my sisters love me,’ I replied, bristling. ‘They’ve always loved me, even when I – when Athena—’
‘Athena? What’s Athena got to do with this?’
Oh, gods, I’d uttered Athena’s name. The more I talked to Perseus, the more I kept revealing. And I wanted him to know. I wanted to tell someone who wasn’t my sisters what it felt like to be me – to have been hated, so misunderstood – to not even understand herself. My whole life, no one had ever stopped to listen, to ask me a single question. They’d just looked at me, and thought they’d found their answer.
‘Merina?’
‘Like I said yesterday, Perseus: it’s complicated.’
‘Well, I’m not going anywhere until you come out of that cave.’
‘I thought you had a mission?’
‘Yes, but I want to know about you,’ he said.
‘You might not like what you hear.’
‘Nobody’s perfect.’
You’re not kidding, I thought, looking up at Callisto and Daphne having a play fight. I considered my options. What could I tell Perseus, and what could I keep hidden? There were nuggets of the truth I could hand over to him – an offering in the hope that he might understand. And what, really, did I have to lose? I liked talking to him and he liked talking to me. He was young, and so was I, and he was lovely, and so had I been, once upon a time. Maybe, by spending time with him, I could feel lovely again.
My snakes, sensing this mental vacillation, began to undulate, as if they too were working out the best path to tread towards this glowing boy, so that he might like me, understand me, accept me for who I was.
‘Merina,’ Perseus said. ‘How about this: if I tell you why I’m here, will you do the same?’
It’s the hardest thing in the world to explain yourself, to tell your story clearly. We are all of us such complicated creatures, whether we have snakes for hair or not. Who we are, and why we are like that – I do not think there is a soul this side of Mount Olympus who can effortlessly explain the twists and turns their life has taken, why they might prefer a fig cake over a honey one, why they fell in love with that man rather than his friend, why they cry at night, or cry at beauty, or cry for no reason at all. But still. It’s all we can do.
‘I will tell you,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I promise.’
Perseus and I were demanding an enormous debt of each other – a mutual acceptance. The offering and receiving of such a thing is greater than the greatest kiss. We were tiptoeing on the edge of what some would call love, looking down into its precipice, wondering what it might be like to fall in.
Have you ever tasted sweet danger? It’s one of the best and worst delicacies, all at once. Best, because nothing – and I repeat, nothing – in life will taste as heady and particular and deceptively right, and just for you. Worst, because once you’ve tasted it, anything that comes after it will only be dull.
‘Perseus,’ I said, my throat constricting. I needed to make him understand, but I could hardly breathe. ‘I do want you to see me.’
‘Good.’
‘But you can’t – because Athena – because I’m … disfigured.’
At this word, Daphne took umbrage and rose up. She had a point: it was fair to say that Daphne in her serpentine beauty was the opposite of disfigurement. I’m sorry, I whispered to her, silently. Daphne coiled into an indignant small ball, and Echo and Artemis wriggled with glee.
And so, with that word and with that warning, our exchange of truths began.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Disfigured?’ said Perseus. There was no alarm in his voice, for which I was more grateful than I could have imagined. ‘How?’
‘Do you mean in what way am I disfigured, or how did it happen?’
‘Both. I want to know it all.’
‘OK. Have you ever felt that every step you take is the right one? Or that every word you speak is one note in a long song you’re going to sing beautifully for the rest of your life?’
He laughed. ‘I have to say no. But it sounds pretty nice.’
‘When I was little, my sisters never asked me to be anything other than who I was. Myself. That’s a great gift, Perseus. It’s a really rare gift. If I could bottle up that confidence, that sense of belonging, and hand it out to every child I might meet, I would. But in the end, it was taken from me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Well. It happens a lot. One day, you’re fishing in the sea with joy and abandon, the next, something’s watching you from beneath. Something huge. Something that will tear your life in two.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Perseus. ‘What tore your life in two?’
From my side of the rock, my mind tumbled, desperately trying to find the best way to tell my story. ‘I’m not saying that I was, or wasn’t, beautiful,’ I said.
‘Beautiful?’ echoed Perseus, and I heard the hope in his voice.
‘I’m not getting trapped in that game any more.’
‘I don’t want to trap you—’
‘I know my worth. It’s not my job to count those coins.’
‘Merina?’
My temper was rising and I tried to control it. ‘But what I will tell you is this: when I was young, the only times I’d ever caught sight of my reflection was in the shoreline on a particularly moonlit day. I’d notice my face, distorted by the ripples from a fishtail, or the trick of a breeze – and think so little of it. It was just my face, Perseus. A pair of eyes, a nose, a mouth, cheeks, a forehead – all of it framed by long, wavy hair. That’s how it was.’
‘You were pretty.’
I sighed. ‘Some people thought so. Others not. When I was about eight, one day, Alekto, a woman in our village, said to my sister Stheno, right in front of me, “That one’s a beauty. She’s going to be a heartbreaker.” Her husband agreed. But another woman, passing by, turned to look. “Oh no,” she said. “She’s nothing special.” “What are you talking about?” said Alekto. “She’s bewitching! Look at that lovely long hair.” And so it started.’
‘What started?’
‘The debate over whether or not I was beautiful. They ended up having an actual fight over my appearance, as if it were the only thing about me that mattered. I remember touching my cheek, flinching as if my skin were hot stone. I was so worried over what I’d done, causing so much trouble. But Stheno said I hadn’t done anything. I simply had a face. I felt I should apologise for something, but I didn’t know what. As time went on, it felt as if other people were trying to enter my body and put their hands all over it, holding it up to the light in a way I never had. They carried on staring at me, dissecting me as if I were a moving sculpture they wanted to turn to stone.’