“THE FIELDS STILL lie fallow, Your Highness.”
With eyes outlined in deep-set creases, King Athamas stared at his overseer of crops. The scrawny, misshapen man – whose deformities included a leg that angled in an unnatural way – was always painful to behold. But it was he who bore the duty to send honors to the Temple of Demos, honors that kept the goddess Demeter pleased and the crops plentiful.
“You failed in your duties,” Athamas said. From his throne he reached to the slim, unblemished hand of his wife, Ino, who sat to his right. The overseer’s eyes flicked to hers. She gave a barely perceptible nod of her head then raised her eyebrows urging him to go on.
“I haven’t, sir.” The man lowered his head and grimaced as he pushed his bad leg into a position that would allow him to kneel before the king. Once to the stone floor of the throne room, he found himself eye to eye with the royal toddlers, Learches and Melicertes, Ino’s twins with Athamas, the twins he had been bribed to lie for. Afraid of them laughing at his crossed eyes as they so often did, the overseer’s glance drifted instead to the feet of Athamas’s children with the former queen, Nephele. The eighteen-year-old Prince Phrixus and Princess Helle were both as beautiful as trees in autumn. And both stood in the way of Ino’s babes becoming heirs to the royal seat of Demos.
“The Oracle has told me why the crops won’t grow and what must be done.” The overseer’s voice trembled. Dear gods, could he do this to Phrixus and Helle? He recalled the fanfare when they were born. He recalled tossing coins to them on the day they were first presented to the public. He recalled their acceptance of him, their seeming blindness to his malformed body and face. Could he destroy them for a woman’s whim and a generous helping of drachars?
“Yes, and what did she say?” The king released Ino’s hand, rose from his throne and yanked the man to standing. The panicked fury clouding Athamas’s face and the sudden motion sent the overseer staggering backwards. Just as his gut lurched with the surety of a hard fall, Phrixus caught him. The overseer looked into the prince’s amber eyes then pushed the young man away before he lost his resolve to sentiment.
The overseer filled his mind with what the queen promised when she came to his bed a month ago. She had let him do what he pleased with her body, more than even the brothel whores allowed. When they were finished, Ino offered him a lifetime of wealth. All he had to do was taint a season’s worth of seed to keep the grain from sprouting. This crop failure would set the gears of false prophecy turning. A prophecy that would guarantee Ino’s children would replace Phrixus and Helle as heirs to the Demosian throne. Ino even promised him free use of the brothel and that his favorite whore, who he found to be off duty whenever he arrived, would always be available. No, he wouldn’t let sentiment steal his future.
“She said the gods are displeased by your children with Nephele.” He spoke quickly, flinging the words out before the lie tangled itself in his throat. “She said you must sacrifice them to keep the polis, to keep Osteria from starvation.”
“My children?” The king’s bronzed face turned to ash and his legs gave a shudder that unsteadied him. Phrixus slipped an arm around his father’s broad back and guided him to the throne. Once their father was seated, Helle tucked into her brother’s protective embrace.
The overseer did not speak. He could not. No more lies would pass his lips. He couldn’t send Phrixus and Helle to their deaths. But Ino looked at him. Her seductive smile restored his resolve. “Yes, Your Highness. The Oracle has decreed it. Many in the city have witnessed her demands.”
Phrixus hugged his sister to him as her shoulders shook with sobs. The young man did not plead with the overseer of the crops, he did not object, he only fixed his face with a regal expression of disappointment. The overseer looked away before he blurted the truth. He caught Ino’s toddlers sniggering at him and his cheeks singed with embarrassment at their cruel giggles.
“When must it be done?” Phrixus asked.
The king found his strength again and bolted from the throne to clutch his elder children to him.
“No, Phrixus,” the king said. He sprung from his throne to stand before his children, angling himself as if guarding Phrixus and Helle from what the overseer might say next. “There must be some other way. We’ll consult another oracle.”
At this, the overseer watched the confident air deflate from Ino’s face. He knew another oracle would reveal the lie. Another oracle’s word would have the queen’s head on the chopping block and his tipping alongside hers into the executioner’s basket.
“Husband,” Ino said, the toddling twins now trailing behind her as she slithered up to the king’s ear. “It is not wise to doubt the Oracle.” She spoke in soothing whispers. “Nephele must have angered the gods. Phrixus and Helle may not even be your own children.” It was an idea she had planted as soon as she had become pregnant. Nephele’s twins, light and lithe, looked nothing like Athamas with his dark features and stout body. Just at the point the king would either begin to agree or to argue, she would drop the matter to let it linger and steep in his mind. Finally, the brewing idea was ready to pour. “The Oracle said as soon as you receive the news and the deed is done, we must get summer seed in the ground or all of Osteria will suffer for lack of grain this winter.”
It wasn’t true, of course. Demos had silos filled with grain, enough to last all of Osteria at least a year. It was insurance against the whims of the gods. An insurance that had always been under the management of Demos’s queen. An insurance Athamas, too busy with gaming and drinking, had never bothered to verify.
King Athamas turned his back on his elder children to face the guards standing at the entryway to his throne room. “Seize them.”
“No, Father!” Helle screamed. She ran toward him ready to plead, but a soldier, one whose advances she had shunned more than once when he caught her in the castle passageways unattended by her ladies, blocked her defense and gripped her by the wrists. She could smell stale garlic on his breath and flicked her face away from his mouth. He tightened his hold and wrenched her arm behind her back. A fire of pain bolted through her shoulder.
A second guard took Phrixus, but the prince gave no hint of resistance. He did nothing but allow his hands to be bound. He held the gaze of his sister as he muttered, “Mother, help us.” The words pushed down a small portion of Helle’s panic. Despite Ino’s shouts to shut him up, Phrixus repeated the plea twice more.
Like flies to a carcass, the people of Demos City were drawn to the agora’s rostrum by the sounds of bells clanging and the sight of the chopping block being put in place. Someone’s head would roll and they didn’t want to miss it. The crowd buzzed with whispered speculations of who it might be. The queen, who had been seen leaving the castle well after those inside should have been sleeping, was the name that danced across most lips.
So, when she appeared on the rostrum looking somber beside her husband whose stern face was as rigid as a stone, a wildfire of “I told you” crackled over the crowd. The overseer of the crops limped up to take his position a respectful distance behind the royal couple and heads began giving flame-fanning nods. But as quickly as the fire of speculation started, it was doused to embers when two guardsmen shoved Phrixus and Helle before the block. Athamas, hefting an axe, silenced the smoldering crowd like a downpour.
“People of Demos, the gods have decreed that only the blood of these two can save us and all of Osteria from starvation.” Although the king spoke in a stiff tone, his jaw trembled as he pinched his lips and stared forward over the heads of those gaping at him.
Protests erupted from the audience and cries of “Kill Ino. Kill her bastard children,” did nothing to smudge the false look of sympathy on the queen’s face.
“One must go first,” Athamas said staring at nothing, speaking to the air.
“Go first, Helle,” Phrixus whispered to his sister whose tears clung to her eyelashes. “Be done with it. If you see me die, it will be far worse for you.”
Her quavering lips parted and she appeared ready to protest until he placed a light kiss on her forehead.
“Mother has forsaken us,” she said. “I thought she would come, but she hates us for not being like her. She hates us for being mortal.”
Phrixus started to protest. He knew their mother was too indifferent to hate them. But before he could speak, his sister pushed out of his arms and dropped to the block, sweeping her long chestnut hair to one side to expose her neck.
Athamas raised the axe.
“At least make it clean, Father,” Phrixus said. The king paused at the words. His eyes met his son’s. All the king’s determination washed away in a flood of tears. The axe thudded to the wood floor of the rostrum causing Helle to jerk and cry out in surprise, but she dare not move and could do nothing but grip the hand holds on the executioner’s block. Athamas took a step forward, ready to pull his daughter from the blood-stained hunk of wood.
A gasp from the crowd turned the king’s attention from his daughter. The people were pointing to the sky. Something golden was racing toward the rostrum.
“Do it,” Ino commanded. “Or the lives of Osteria will be on your hands.”
At the queen’s order, the king dragged his sword from its scabbard. He had sharpened it the night before. The cut would be clean and swift. He closed his eyes against the task he had to do. As his muscles twitched to bring the weapon over his head and into the swift arc of death, a weight crashed into his chest knocking him to the floor of the rostrum. The sword clanged behind him. Several sharp points drove into his torso.
“How dare you, you fool of a mortal.”
It had to be a trick. The voice, like the purr of a cat thrilling over the prospect of a kill, was that of his former wife, Nephele – the immortal nymph he had put aside for Ino. When he opened his eyes he expected to see her, but instead was greeted by the viciously curved beak of an eagle. An eagle that measured the size of a large pony. Her body was covered not in feathers but in flowing golden hair, hair that reminded Athamas of Nephele’s long locks that he used to comb with his fingers after they made love.
“I—” he stammered. “It was necessary. The Oracle.”
The eagle gave a keening screech.
“The Oracle was bribed by your whoring wife, you blind idiot. Phrixus, Helle, on me. I should never have left you here. There are safer lands for you.”
With her talons still digging into Athamas’s sides, the eagle-shaped Nephele gripped tighter to the king while Phrixus climbed onto her back, pulling Helle up behind him.
“Hold tight to me,” he told his sister, but her whole body quivered as if she’d been bathing in ice water.
Nephele flicked out wings that spread as wide as the rostrum. A single thrust of her legs sent her into the sky while tearing deep gashes through Athamas’s robes and flesh.
“She lies,” Ino yelled, whirling around to anyone who would listen and ignoring her bleeding husband. She locked eyes on the guards. “They must die or we will all die. Guards, fire!”
The guards remained fixed, blatantly disobeying the queen’s commands. All but one. The burly man notched his arrow and raised it. He fished his tongue around to clear the taste of old garlic from his mouth and then fired. The arrow soared. Phrixus called to his mother to dive but her wings were made for endurance and strength, not agility. Phrixus heard a thunk. His sister’s grip tightened against his chest, then her arms fell from him and cold wind hit his back where Helle’s warm body had been pressing.
Nearly unseating himself, he scrambled to twist behind and grab his twin’s wrist. His fingers caught hers. He squeezed his legs to steady himself on his mother’s back then swung his other arm around to snatch Helle’s wrist, her arm, anything to get a better hold. But his sister’s slim fingers slipped through his sending her tumbling through the air, back to Demos, back to the rostrum.
Her body landed in the blood that had spilled from Athamas’s wounds. The sight of his daughter’s body in his own blood stirred the king from his spell. He held the queen’s gaze as he pushed himself to standing.
“Guards,” the king commanded, “seize the overseer of the crops.” Ino turned her most innocent smile toward the king. His expression did not soften. “And the queen.” The guards were on the two in less than a heartbeat.
Athamas strode toward the guard who had fired the arrow. The man stood tall, rigid, staring over the king’s shoulder as he’d been trained to do, but the unmistakable sound of a blade being drawn from a scabbard, forced him to glance at his king. He chewed on the mixture of bile and garlic fouling his mouth as he registered the disgust in the king’s eyes. Something cold slid through his belly. There was no pain until the king jerked to yank the dagger upward. The guard watched slick ropes unfurl from his gut before collapsing to the floor.
The king faced the crowd.
“Blood will be spilled today for the health of this polis.” He nodded to the guard holding the overseer. The man was brought before the block, his legs were kicked out from under him and the blade hammered through his neck before the overseer had a chance to settle his misshapen head into the block’s groove. The king kicked the crooked body out of the way and nodded to the man restraining the queen.
Ino was steered to the block but not treated so roughly as her lover. Kneeling at the block, she met the eyes of her king.
“Husband, you cannot do this. You love—”
Her words were cut off as her head departed her body.
* * *
Nephele flew her son west across Osteria. Despite Phrixus’s questions, she refused to speak of why she left him and his sister behind when Athamas chose another wife. She gave no lament over Helle’s death. She did not explain how she heard her son’s pleas. She only flew. Eventually Phrixus grew silent, forcing himself to still the lurching sensation in his core as the world raced by hundreds of feet below him.
When Phrixus saw the edge of the Western Sea his courage left him. He had no desire to fly into the unknown, to the edge of the world beyond the shores of Osteria.
“Mother, where are we headed?”
Rather than receive an answer, Phrixus’s stomach jumped as his mother arced into a dive. Under him, his mother’s muscles flexed and shifted as she adjusted her angle. Without realizing what he was doing, Phrixus gripped the golden hair at Nephele’s shoulders tight enough to make his hands ache. She gave no complaint.
Daring to look down, Phrixus saw a large bay whose only entrance from the Western Sea was a narrow opening where two points of land nearly joined. Nephele made a tight circle to land at the harbor situated below a city built into the cliff face at the easternmost edge of the bay.
Once on solid ground, Phrixus released his hold and slid off his mother’s glittering back. Before he could say anything, ask her any questions, share with her his grief over Helle, guards dressed all in black surrounded them. Marching through the ranks came a tall man in his middle age; the crown circling his head caught the evening light as Apollo pulled the sun into the Western Sea. As he neared, Phrixus noted that the man’s dark beard had been trimmed into the shape of waves at his cheeks. Rising from the wave on the left cheek an artist had inked a tattoo of the sun.
“What business have you here?” the tattooed man said with no hint of welcome in his voice.
Phrixus went to one knee. “Sire, I do not know where here is. My mother believes you will provide me safe lodging.”
The older man’s stormy eyes shifted up from the young man and softened with recognition.
“Aunt Nephele,” he said in greeting.
Phrixus looked to the man and then behind him. His mother had resumed her human form and looked as young as Helle had. She now stood clutching a golden-haired cloak around her bare shoulders. She signaled to Phrixus to rise.
“My sister, Perseis, is King Aeetes’s mother. Aeetes is your cousin,” she said to Phrixus in explanation, then turned her attention to the king. “Aeetes, you will allow Phrixus to remain in the kingdom of Colchis.” Her words were a demand, not a suggestion, not a request.
“Why should I?” Aeetes said crossing his arms over his barrel-shaped chest. “You know, I don’t approve of strangers in my land.”
“He is family,” Nephele said. “And he comes with a gift.” She shrugged to make the cloak catch the fire of the sunset. “As long as this cloak is in your possession, your kingdom will be protected from invaders. Not even the Areans will touch your borders.”
Aeetes looked from mother to son. Colchis’s surrounding mountains and sea kept her protected, but one could never be too careful. There had been word of battle between two poli – Portaceae and Cedonia, if the news bearer was correct. Those lands were far to the south but one never knew how far these skirmishes might spill. Aeetes eyed Phrixus. Young, strong, confident. Yes, he could be useful. The lands at the north end of the bay’s entrance needed guarding. With the creatures that roamed that area, the job was not a pleasant one, but who better to watch over the entrance to the kingdom of Colchis than a cousin?
And that cloak. If Nephele was telling the truth, the cloak could ease many of his worries.
“Yes, fine. He can stay,” Aeetes said with false warmth.
Phrixus thanked him, but said no more. He thanked the gods he was alive, but his body felt boulder-heavy with grief for his sister. His throat tightened. Before his emotion could embarrass him in front of Aeetes he turned to speak with his mother. Nephele stepped toward him and he almost stepped back, unfamiliar with any show of affection from her. But she made no move to embrace him, she only leaned in so her purring, barely audible words could breeze into his ear. “The owner of that cloak will rule Osteria, but neither you nor Aeetes is the pelt’s owner, merely its guardian.” Phrixus moved to face his mother, to show her with a nod he understood. But before he could, his mother turned her back on him and gave a shimmy of her shoulders that sent the cloak trickling to the dock in a golden pool. Then, naked with a body that was youthfully firm, she dove into the bay.
Aeetes snatched up the cloak.
“Water nymphs,” he said with a disgruntled snort. “Never stable and definitely not reliable. Now, come. Meet my youngest daughter, Chalciope. I’ve no use for her. You’ll take her as your wife when you leave tomorrow to your new duty. You’re familiar with how to handle satyrs?”
Phrixus allowed himself to be led away. He gave one last look over his shoulder to the bay but there was no sign of his mother.