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Pirithous
“I’m prescribing a course of antibiotics,” Steven said, scratching something on a sheet of what Thalia called paper. From papyrus, she’d said, like the Egyptian scrolls. Steven tore it off and passed it to Thalia. “I’ll get it called in within the hour. It’s in Thalia’s name, since I assume your immigration problems keep you from having health insurance or risking any kind of paper trail. Take the full course. The worst of the infection should clear up in a couple of days, but you need to rest your shoulder until it closes up. If you were anyone else... That kind of wound really should have had stitches. For future reference, I guess.”
Pirithous glanced at Thalia. She accepted the small sheet of paper from her friend, clearly having no trouble with his instructions. Listening to Steven was more difficult for him than following Thalia, even at her fastest. Every other word was strange, and he was too tired to care and too proud to ask for explanation when he was already so weak. He snorted. At least he knew his own failures. The gods had made him suffer for his hubris more than once.
“What if the antibiotics don’t work?” Thalia asked.
“Call me and I’ll phone in another script. Unless he has some superbug, I don’t see why there would be a problem. His heart is strong, his breathing is regular, there’s no sign of blood poisoning. Honestly, he’s healing well aside from the infection.”
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be without doing blood work and cultures. Which I can’t do outside of a hospital.” Thalia’s eyes narrowed, and Steven raised his hands, palms out. “I know, I know. I’m not saying you should, I’m just saying it’s a limitation.”
Pirithous closed his eyes. Thalia’s tension rose and fell like waves against rock, but her concerns made little sense to him. No mortal could remove him from these lands when the gods had placed him here. He had given no offense, broken no sacred laws, harmed no one.
No one but Thalia.
Her hand was cool on his forehead. “What about the fever?”
“The antibiotics should take care of it as the infection clears up,” Steven said. “That’s the best I can do for him right now.”
She sighed. “Thank you.”
“Just don’t mention it to your brother.”
Pirithous snorted again, opening his eyes. Steven was not a small man, and he had not hesitated to provide healing, even after he had been threatened at sword point. Pirithous could not believe him to be a coward. “What is it about this man that so many fear him?”
Steven shrugged. “He’s just intense, I guess. Very protective of his family and their reputations.”
Thalia made a sound of disgust. “Overbearing asshole, I think, are the words you’re looking for.”
“You’re his sister, Thalia. You can’t blame him.”
“I can and I do. He’s more concerned with how my reputation reflects on him than he is on what it means for me. If I were off the map, he wouldn’t care at all what I was doing.”
“Ah,” Pirithous said.
Thalia glanced at him and he felt her irritation. “Ah what?”
“When you marry, you will be free of it.”
She dropped her hand from his forehead, her eyes darkening. “It’s finding someone worth marrying that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
He held her gaze, unable to look away from the pain in her face. He wished he could spare her somehow. He wished the centaurs had not come, and the gods would set him free, that he might free her, in turn, and love her without worry.
She turned to Steven. “So is that everything?”
“Should be. Give me a call if the infection doesn’t clear up. Plenty of fluids, Pirithous. You’re sweating off more water than you’re taking in right now, and you can’t afford to be dehydrated.” He put away his strange tools in a black case. “I don’t have another day off for eight days, Thalia.”
She pressed her lips together. “I understand.”
Steven clasped his good hand. “You’re a very strange man, Pirithous. Hopefully the next time we meet it will be under better circumstances.”
He left before Pirithous could offer his gratitude and Thalia followed. They spoke in low tones and Pirithous did not have the strength to waste straining to listen. He was tired, and he had not wished to sleep while Steven remained, unwilling to risk waking confused again. Thalia would not forgive it if he harmed her friend, and he would not forgive himself if he caused her any further pain.
He’d already done enough.
***
AFTER STEVEN LEFT, he slept, rousing once to swallow some bitter pill, and then falling back into dreamlessness. Sometime during that period, Thalia had returned to lie beside him in her wide bed, her head resting in the hollow of his uninjured shoulder. An unnatural flicker of light colored her skin in shades of blue, green, and purple.
He would have liked to stroke the smooth skin of her shoulder and let his hand travel the length of her arm where it followed the line of her waist. He would have liked to press kisses at the nape of her neck and along her spine to the point where her bare skin disappeared beneath the low-cut tunic she wore. He would have liked to roll to his side and draw her body back to his until she felt his desire hardened between them and she squirmed against him, teasing and tormenting until he groaned.
But it was the pain of his shoulder which had woken him, and he did not dare move his arm to caress her. Even if he had been well enough, she had refused him the comfort her body might offer through release.
She had refused him, because he had rejected her. Because of the gods. His arm twitched.
Thalia lifted her head, her eyes catching his in the dim rainbow light. “Did the television wake you? You were so dead to the world I thought it would be okay.”
The light disappeared with a wave of a small black rectangle in her hands, and she rolled to face him in the dark, reaching up to brush her fingers across his forehead. They were still cool and he closed his eyes, wanting to remember her touch.
“You’ve cooled down a little, maybe,” she said. “How do you feel?”
Heartbroken. Possessive. Frustrated. “As well as might be expected.”
“You should go back to sleep, if you can.”
He shook his head, memorizing her features in the dark. She did not see as well as he did, he knew already, so she would not glimpse the desire in his eyes, nor his pain. “I feel as though I have done nothing but sleep.”
She smiled almost shyly, unable to meet his eyes even in the dark. “Do you want to watch a movie? You have to promise you won’t be offended, though.”
“You mentioned movies before, but I still do not know what they are.”
“I’ll show you.” She sat up before he could stop her, and he watched her struggle to shift a chest of drawers and rearrange a box atop of it. A click and a whir and a blue light flared to life inside the box, casting a glow over her skin. The same glow he had noticed earlier, though he had not bothered to look for the source.
“You promise you won’t be offended?”
He smiled. “How can I promise if I do not yet know what you mean for me to see?”
“It’s about Hercu—I mean Heracles. But it’s for kids, so they took some artistic license with the story. It’s just for fun, all right?”
“As you say,” he agreed, his eyes fixed on the box in which images like paintings were moving. He shifted slightly, sitting up in spite of the pain to see it more easily. Thalia helped him immediately, forcing pillows behind his back for support. “This is not magic? Some enchantment to make the figures move?”
Thalia lay beside him, her head resting against his shoulder once more. “It’s run by electricity but I can’t really tell you how it works works. Something about electrons being fired at the screen? Or maybe not anymore. I don’t know. It’s purely scientific though. No magic involved.”
Figures claiming to be the muses began to sing and he might have laughed if not for the ache in his shoulder. “These movies serve as bards?”
“Bards were just storytellers, right?”
“They sang of the deeds of great heroes and kings, and brought news from other parts of the world.”
“In movies, we mostly make stuff up. The evening news is where you find out what’s happening in other parts of the world. Or in the newspapers. We call the factual stuff journalism.”
“But this is the story of Heracles.” He still did not understand why they called him Hercules, though Thalia had tried to explain about a people called Romans who lived west of Greece. He did not understand why she referred to Achaea as Greece, either, for that matter.
“It’s kind of the story of Heracles. Just listen and watch. See—that’s Hades. With the blue fire on his head.”
Pirithous had no words to describe the absurdity that followed. Zeus as a jovial and loving father, and Hera—Hera who had given Heracles such grief in life, doting upon him as a babe. The Pegasus, born of Medusa, formed out of clouds as a gift for a child. And Heracles himself, depicted as an awkward youth. Even the magic of the moving paintings was overwhelmed by the enormity of the errors within the story. They could not truly believe that Zeus was some pillar of jolly goodness, or that the Titans were mindless beasts? No wonder Thalia had no fear of what might come.
“Thalia,” he said slowly, after the moving paintings had gone and the box showed nothing but writing. “Is this truly what your people think of the gods?”
She rose from the bed, and with some small motions the box went black. “Some people, probably. Maybe even a lot of them. Not many people bother studying classical mythology anymore. I only know as much as I do because figures from mythology appear so often in art.”
“But not me.”
She did not turn, still busying herself with the box. “I haven’t seen anything with you in it, no.” She extracted a small disc, placing it in a much smaller box and setting that on the chest. “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
He would have been bothered by it, perhaps, had he known it before his imprisonment in the chair. Now it seemed only fitting. What was there to remember? He had done nothing for the greater world, only using his strength and power for his personal concerns. And it was not the fact that he had been forgotten which troubled him now. Better that Thalia knew him as he was, than read of him through some insulting account of Phaedra’s.
“The gods do not dote upon their children, Thalia. Nor does it seem they particularly love or care for one another, on Olympus. If you count upon this portrayal as protection—”
“I don’t.” She came back to the bed, sitting down beside him. “I don’t count on your gods at all. I’m not sure I even believe in them.”
“Even more dangerous if you do not,” he said, unable to keep the worry from his voice. “You will provoke them, if you are not careful.”
Thalia took his hand. “I have to believe that God will protect me, Pirithous. No matter what comes. Why else are there all these saints and angels, if not to protect us from otherworldly forces?”
He pressed his lips together, searching her face. “Swear to me you will not call to your Virgin for protection or help.”
Her eyebrows crashed together, her forehead creasing deeply. “What? Why?”
“It is not safe,” he said, squeezing her fingers. She fought against his grip, but he did not let go. “Swear to me, Thalia. Appeal only to your god, if you must, but do not call to her, or any of the other saints or angels you speak of.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Pirithous!” Her confusion was turning quickly to frustration, and from there, he knew, it would be a short step to anger. “Why would you not want me to protect myself?”
“Can your god not send these angels and saints to help you, if you pray to him directly?”
“Of course he can but—”
“Then you would still be protected, more so, for your god will know which are the most suitable to guard you from this danger. Is this not so?”
She was still frowning, her eyes narrowed in the darkness of the room. “I guess.”
“I would not ask you to make any vow without reason. Surely you know this by now.”
“What have you got against the Virgin Mary?”
Now was not the time to offend the goddess of love by revealing her secrets. Not if he wished Thalia to be kept safe. “Can you not trust me in this small thing?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it, turning her face away. He could feel her confusion, her frustration, and beneath all of that, a twisting fear. He was glad of it. She should be afraid, or worried at the very least.
“For forever?” she asked at last. “I’m not allowed to pray to anyone but God ever again?”
“You need not fear it after I am dead.”
She gave him a sharp look, her anger piercing his heart. “If I swear this, will you swear not to get yourself purposely killed? Swear that you’ll do everything in your power to live.”
He shook his head slowly. “You would tie me to a life empty of meaning?”
“You have a second chance, Pirithous. But meaning isn’t something that drops out of the clouds. Find something that you love and follow it.”
Something that he loved. He stroked her cheek with his good hand, feeling the swell of her desire echoing his own. A whisper was all it would take, to bring her lips to his. A murmur of agreement would draw her against his body, warm and soft and slick. Except it was not so simple. It would never be so simple again. He dropped his hand.
“I cannot serve what I love in life, but sacrifice for another is an honorable way to die. A meaningful way.”
“Then I guess neither one of us will be making any promises tonight.”
She left him then, and he did not dare to call her back. But he did not think either one of them would find peace in sleep that night, together or apart.