Those Fatal Flowers

Those Fatal Flowers

1

Now

When my eyes crack open, the world is veiled in shadow. It’s a darkness I remember, the same shade as the pit that swallowed Proserpina, and it’s just as cold. After all these years, did the Underworld finally claim me? I brush my lips with trembling fingers and find no coin for passage placed between my teeth. But the relief that swells in my chest at this fact is crushed by the memory of climbing into my small boat.

If I’m dead, I died alone.

Shapes slowly emerge against that inky blackness: a billowing white fabric, so much like Proserpina’s gowns, with hundreds of tiny lights blinking into existence behind it. My mouth falls open in awe, remembering the sight of her in that pool surrounded by fireflies. But I taste salt on my tongue, and the illusion is shattered. It’s not my long-lost love descending to greet me at the Underworld’s gates. It’s a sail swelling with a fresh gust of wind, and behind it, a blanket of stars. There are some familiar faces in the constellations, although they twinkle down without offering any hope.

So I’m still alive.

Nothing delights the gods more than a cruel twist of destiny, so the Fates must have been gleeful as they wove and apportioned my life’s thread. A tragedy written across centuries, full of more despair than a single human life can hold. And now Morta’s shears finally tease along its fibers. The old goddess is surely salivating as her sisters press beside her, their shared eye wide with anticipation as they wait for my final, most humiliating moment to reveal itself. That will be when the blades clamp down, when the stars go dark.

The moon emerges from behind a veil of clouds, as if Luna’s decided to revel in my plight. She’s already over halfway full again. When I left, she was a sliver in the sky, barely more than a dark void in the heavens, but I’ve been in this boat long enough to watch her swell into a perfect circle and then fall back into shadow once more. One precious full moon lost to the sea, and my second only a little over a week away.

A cold breeze blows across my cracked skin as I slide onto the floor for another trying night. Coins clink as I settle atop them, and the sharp edge of an ornate ruby ring presses into my back. I push it aside with a frustrated sigh. How many more mornings do I have left? The stars of Cetus, fellow monster, scintillate in sync with the waves that slosh against the boat’s edges. But the gods won’t honor my death by hanging my image in the heavens like they did hers. I’ll turn to carrion, and this tiny skiff will be my grave—the punishment that I alone deserve.

A dry sob escapes me, splitting open my bottom lip on its way out, but I’m too dehydrated for any tears to join it. I should have known it would end this way. When has fate ever been on my side, truly?

Ceres will be thrilled.

My mouth falls open to the sky for one last plea. The words dig their claws into my throat, fearful of the pain that speaking them into existence will bring, but I force them out anyway.

“Let me save them.”

The voice that fills the air is one I don’t recognize: It’s scratchy and weak, a far cry from the sonorous one capable of driving men into the sea. The wind carries it away as if it never existed at all. Overhead, Luna retreats behind another gauzy cloud. I must be too pitiful to look upon.

Damn them all.

My tongue tastes copper, and I raise a weak hand to wipe away the blood that oozes from the crack in my lip. But my fingers falter before I can. Instead, I roll onto my side and press my mouth against one of the planks. When I raise my head, a gory kiss looks back at me from the wood.

Take it. May this small offering seal my prayer.

I owe my sisters this, and I beg all who will listen for help: the waves, the stars, Proserpina.

The boat shudders around me. A monster must have heard my cries, drawn to the surface by the promise of an easy meal. An awful scratching fills the air, so much like claws on wood, and my shaking hands grab hold of the gunwale in a poor attempt to steady myself. Immediately, my knuckles turn white.

What waits for me below the water’s surface? Perhaps Scylla, human from the waist up like I was, but with a monstrous bottom half too maddening to behold in its entirety—the giant serpentine tail used for dragging ships into her vast sea cave, the snarling mouths of rabid hounds that encircle her waist. Or maybe I’ve found myself on the lip of Charybdis’s infinite maw just as she’s poised to turn this section of sea into a whirlpool that will swallow me down into her rows upon rows of glittering, concentric teeth. Will my final resting place be among the cemetery of ships she holds in her belly? It takes the last of my strength to muster my courage to peer into the depths below.

But there are no gleaming scales, no eyes of an angry leviathan looking back at me—there are only stones. I’ve washed ashore.

“Thank you,” I whisper as my eyes sweep over the rocky beach before me. Luna reappears, her silvery light glinting off the white sea-foam that collects where the waves meet land. A tangled mess of trees sit just beyond the beach. Their empty branches sway in the chilly late autumn air.

A shaky laugh escapes from the back of my throat. It hurts, but I don’t care. I did it. I survived. Despite the cold wind that swirls all around me, an unfamiliar warmth gathers in my belly. Is this what being blessed feels like? I wouldn’t know—I’m not used to my prayers being answered.

When a light flickers in the trees ahead, I can’t help but smile. A man stumbles out onto the beach, lifting his torch in my direction. He’s far enough away that his face is buried in shadow, but when his body straightens, I know he’s caught sight of me. I don’t move until he’s standing over me, his confusion painted orange by the torchlight. He wears simple linen clothes, though they’re soiled, and his smell, a mixture of stale sweat and even staler alcohol, burns my nostrils. He slurs something down at me, but his words are undecipherable. Instinct brings my fingers to the small pendant around my neck, nestled above my heart. Only then do the consonants that fall from the man’s lips warp into a shape I recognize.

Does this small miracle belong to Jaquob’s saint?

“Wh-who are you?”

My mouth splits open instinctively to let my song pour out, but my throat is too raw to make music. The sound that escapes instead is ghastly—it’s wind blowing over dead leaves, it’s the beating of locust wings. The man hears death in it and runs back into the woods without another word. If he returns, he won’t be alone.

Good. I need more than one.

The stars above don’t have time to move across the vault of the heavens before I hear them, a whole mob, and I lie back down and close my eyes. My lips fall open just so, as if asking for a kiss. Even without magic, men are easily manipulated.

“S-see! I t-told ya!” the familiar voice rattles. I picture him pointing at me with a victorious smile splashed across his reddened face. “But she was . . . she was awake!”

A different man guffaws. “Are you mad, John? I’ll concede that there’s indeed a woman here, but look at her! She’s dead. You let the alcohol get the best of you. Again.”

“I didn’t, Thomas. I swear it,” John says, but even I hear the hesitation that now laces his voice.

“See all the treasure?” Rocks crunch beneath Thomas’s feet as he draws closer. “This is a funerary ship.”

Gods, I can feel him standing over me, feel his eyes examining the sight before him. Somehow, my parched mouth grows even drier.

“A funerary ship?”

“Of course. The Vikings used to send their dead to sea with all sorts of riches. Perhaps the Croatoans do as well.”

The boat creaks as Thomas grabs hold of its edges to lower himself beside me. He scrapes together a handful of coins and gems and lets them slip through his fingers slowly, reveling in the clinks and tings they make as they fall into place among the other treasures in my hoard. Then he touches me.

His caress is light at first, but it still burns through my gown. Cold fingers flatten into a heavy palm that takes its time crawling up my midsection. Suddenly, I’m that young girl again, and it’s the first time sailors arrived on our shores, all those unknown hands grabbing for me—except now I have no way to protect myself from him. From them.

How much of me would he feel entitled to explore if there wasn’t a crowd behind him?

His palm finally settles atop my heart and finds what he wasn’t expecting—a beating organ; his shock is revealed by the slightest hitch in his breath.

“She’s . . . she’s alive!” His voice is now clipped, controlled. “Quick! This woman is alive!”

Murmurs erupt through the crowd, and a few seconds later, a gentler hand lifts my right wrist to find the vein at its base.

“We must get her inside.”

Though her speech is hurried, it still sounds like music, like the lyres that graced the halls of Ceres’s palace. The glittering sound is both a balm and a blade—I never considered that women might be caught in my plans.