It went on, time did, and Eros became a man. He set one foot in front of the other and traveled the world, a smile creasing his face, a trail of love unfurling behind him like a warm summer dream. He strained his muscles to bend the bow of love and loosed his shimmering arrows into mortal hearts, causing them to forgive all faults in another, to take that person as their other half, to embrace that person with nothing less than every fiber of their heart.
But Eros was empty. His own immortal heart ached for the feelings he inspired so often. Time swirled about him and his footsteps slowed. He lingered in each love story he brought into existence, lingered in the passion. He watched from the shelter of a shady oak as two lovers embraced, and his fingers crept over the gnarled bark of the tree, searching.
And then he saw her. Later, he would not recall the moment or the day, the weather or what she wore. He saw only her smile, her eyes, the way she walked. Her head held high, she strolled the rolling meadow, stopping here and there to smell a flower or rest by a stream or marvel at the intricacies of a spider’s web. She walked with the easy composure of a woman who had raised herself and the silken grace of a woman who knew she had raised herself well. Eros hid himself in the grasses and followed her achingly, learning the curves of her body and the ways of her soul. Her name, he learned, was Psyche. It rolled forward on his tongue with the warm, smooth taste of copper.
Eros . . .
Eros . . .
He turned from her, from Psyche, towards the voice in the sky, the voice on Olympus. He turned from her with a sigh, but as he did his hand slipped on the dew-moistened grasses and one of his gold-tipped arrows touched his heart. Looking back at beautiful Psyche, Eros was filled, finally, finally, with the feeling he had sought: love.
Eros!
Quickly, he turned and left.
The wide halls of Olympus drowned him in air. He struggled to keep his stride confined, to keep his hands from swinging at his sides, until he reached his mother’s chamber, Aphrodite’s chamber. “Mother?” he murmured.
She looked terrible. Her perfect golden hair was mussed, frayed. Her dress lay wrinkled on her thin body. Her almond eyes were rimmed with red. “Eros,” she breathed, a prayer and curse at once. “Fix it.”
He looked about the room. A broken vase? A cracked mirror? “Fix what?” he asked, bewildered.
“A woman. A mortal woman has dared to has become . . . more beautiful than I am. Curse her. Kill her. Lock her in a faraway dungeon. I don’t care. Get rid of her.”
The goddess looked so desperate like that, one hand fisted around her hair, the other fidgeting the hem of her dress. Eros nodded, and he left her to her suffering.
It did not take him long to find the woman his mother had spoken of. Everywhere he went mortal men whispered of her while their wives gossiped in the kitchen. Men dreamed of her scent while they worked idly in the fields. He followed the whispers of her to the gate of a vast castle. And then he saw her. She sat upon a stone bench in a thriving, colorful garden, her eyes roaming the lilies and roses that grew there. Even sitting, she carried herself with strength, strength gained from a life without a father, without a mother.
A tear stained Eros’ godly cheek. His throat constricted and he wanted only to reach out and touch this beautiful mortal, just once, before he cursed her for eternity. But he could not touch her. His hand faltered on its course to her cheek. He pulled the vial of poison from his pocked and tipped a tiny droplet on her head. She reached up a hand a touched the spot, shrugged and returned to her musings. Eros tucked himself into the comforting nest of a flower’s cup, and he cried. Forever and always, the woman he loved would find no man to marry her. Such was his potion. Such was her curse.
It was too much. Suddenly Eros rose from the shelter of the bud and reached for his golden arrows. He pulled back his bowstring, past his ear, and loosed it into the depths of Psyche’s heart.
In her garden, Psyche gasped. She looked up, startled, and met Eros’ gaze. One, two, three seconds passed.
“Psyche! Psyche, you are needed!”
Psyche blinked, swallowed and dashed away, tossing a rose blossom to the ground behind her. Eros reached down and tucked the blossom into his shirt, where it rested for all the day against the slow, smooth drum of his heart.
Psyche’s slender fingers guided the needle in and out of the cloth. It was mind-numbing work, sewing, and her thoughts soared elsewhere, winging through worlds of half-formed fantasy and weaving more elegant designs than her fingers ever could.
It had been three years since the day in the garden when something extraordinary had happened. Those flyaway thoughts of hers often alighted on that stone bench and pondered the events of that moment. She had felt the brush of a man’s hand against her bosom, ever so lightly, but when she looked about, no one was there. Had it even happened? Was her imagination getting the better of her once more?
Psyche was truly a woman now, more than just a girl. Her elder sisters were married to princes, weaving silk instead of cotton, sipping wine instead of water. They asked her to their homes often, and once the feasting was over the cornered her and spoke to her in the ways of elder siblings who will never realize that their little sister has grown up. She knew they whispered of her when she was not around, too. She imagined them leaning in over twin goblets of wine, murmuring like teenagers of their wayward sister. Why is she not married, they would say. Is she defective? The same question began to gnaw at Psyche.
Psyche set down her sewing and slipped her feet into her sandals. She moved decisively, stuffing a loaf of hard, dark bread and a roll of cheese into a sack. She left the house without a backwards glance, her heart and mind already at the Oracle of Delphi.
She arrived at the temple at sundown on her eighth day of traveling. Her feet were blistered in her sandals and her stomach was six days empty. She collapsed at the pillared entry, tears cleaning pale peach lines down her dirties face.
“Come, beautiful one, rise,” murmured a gentle voice. A hand touched her forearm and from that touch strength sieved into Psyche’s tired body, filling her. She looked up into the eyes of Pythia, the oracle, the wisest of the wise. They were kind eyes. The Oracle guided Psyche up the last flight of stairs leading into the temple to a spring that welled from the center of the octagonal room. “Drink,” ordered Pythia. “Drink and you will feel strong again.”
Psyche drank. Sweet water filled her mouth and she swallowed liquid energy and strength. The predatory hunger in her belly recoiled a bit. At last she wiped her mouth on her wrist and faced the wisest woman in the world. “How much money for a prophesy?” she said. It took work to keep her voice from cracking and betraying her disgust for paying for a gift from the gods.
“For you? Nothing.” Pythia gazed pensively into the fountain. “My child, your future will be a challenging one. I can accept no payment.”
“Challenging?” Psyche croaked.
“Yes. No man will take you as his husband. You will be alone forever.”
Tears blossomed in the corners of Psyche’s eyes and she blinked them back, biting her lip so hard she tasted the coppery spike of her own blood. She didn’t want to be alone.
“Unless.”
“Unless?”
The oracle nodded sagely. “There is one being who will take you. You may never see his face and never feel his skin, but he will love you wholly. You must travel to the peak of the highest mountain and lay yourself to sleep there. That is as far as my vision takes me. It is a difficult road, child. It may lead only to death, or marriage to a monster. Are you prepared to follow this road, regardless?”
Psyche nodded. She could no longer restrain her tears and they spilled down her dirt-stained cheeks to linger, salty, on her lips. “Thank you,” she whispered.
The oracle nodded. Her hand rested gently on Psyche’s shoulder and her thumb rubbed back and forth. “Sleep here the night. In the morning I will supply you with enough food to reach the summit. Are we agreed?”
Psyche did not respond. She was already fast asleep.
Eros hid himself in the cold, pricking turmoil of a thundercloud. Floating on his stomach he watched his one true love, his Psyche, trudging over the many miles to the highest mountain. His heart ached for her. She did not stop to smell the flowers, nor did she pause to contemplate the complex patterns of a burbling brook. When she stopped her heavy, rhythmic walk, she dropped to the earth like a stone to examine her many blisters and gnaw on her stale bread.
His heart bled for her. He saw nothing but her tortured beauty, the angry purple shadows beneath her eyes. Where was her innocence? What had he done to take that from her? His mother’s curse, he reminded himself, was her captor. He had only been obedient and spilled it upon the woman.
For many days Eros followed Psyche towards the lair of the beast she was to marry. He knew her pain. He knew she plodded tiredly towards her death, or towards a lifetime in a seething, burning hell. Perhaps he felt more of her pain than she did, for the mortal knew nothing of her future save what she could imagine of it.
And then she arrived at the peak of the highest mountain. Tripping on a pebble, she tumbled to the ground and stayed there, weeping silently. Eros slid closer and brushed a lock of hair from her face, marveling at the softness of her skin.
From its lair, the monster breathed its hot, sticky poison and looked upon Psyche’s beauty with greedy, grabbing eyes. Those eyes devoured her.
Eros could stand it no longer. He moved and changed in the strange, more-than-human way of the gods and became Zephyr, the West Wind. He reached out his wind-arms and wrapped them about the trembling form of Psyche and he carried her far from the grasps of that monster and his starving, seeking eyes. He laid her down at the base of the mountain, where a meadow closed its grasses above her head. He smiled his wind-smile, for he had saved her, and he let her sleep in peace.
Psyche awoke little by little. A gentle wind played across her face and tossed her dirtied dress this way that that. Grass danced above her head and tickled the expanse of a clear blue sky. She had been dreaming, she knew, but the dream was fuzzy and half remembered like the precise moment when winter becomes spring. In the dream she had been flying, supported by the loving arms of the West Wind. She had been surrounded by the scent of gardenia.
She pushed herself to sitting and noticed with a burst of joy that the million aches and pains of her long, arduous trek her were gone. She looked about and saw a far-reaching meadow and the highest mountain looming above her like a displeased parent. But there, facing the mountain, was a beautiful palace, shimmering in the sunlight.
“It is yours,” whispered a voice in her ear. She whirled, for she knew somehow that the voice belonged to the man whose hand had brushed her chest on that day in the garden so many years ago. No one was there. Psyche laughed and ran towards the palace, delighted by the new vigor in her limbs.
Inside, the palace was a wonderland of beautiful things and sounds. Music drifted from some high chamber, but as hard as she searched she could find no musicians. And, in each room she searched, she found some new treasure to distract her. Here, a tiny glass bird no bigger than a robin’s egg. Here, a beautiful lyre from which she could draw the purest of sounds although she had never touched the instrument before in her life. When she grew hungry, she came upon a room in which a beautiful breakfast was spread. She ate with vigor, but questions mulled about in her mouth with the food.
Night came and darkness dropped a warm, purple mantle over the palace. Psyche found a room with a large, soft bed and crawled under the blankets, but seep would not come. She stared at a ceiling shrouded in night as if she might find the answers there, if only she looked just hard enough.
“Psyche, are you happy here?” breathed the voice from earlier. It was a good voice, a soft voice, and Psyche could not imagine that the voice belonged to the monster she was prophesied to marry.
“Are you my husband?” she asked.
“Yes,” was the simple reply. And then, some ten minutes later, the question came again. “Are you happy here?”
“I would be happier if I could look upon the face of my husband,” Psyche taunted.
He laughed and the rounded syllables flowed about her, but his words, when they came, were heavy with grief. “I would love nothing more than to appear to you, but you must understand that the day you see my face is the day our happiness ends. There are those who would not approve of this marriage, Psyche. If they ever found out, all this goes away. The palace, the music, all of it. Do you understand that?”
“I’m not a child, of course I understand,” Psyche bit, but she immediately felt sorry for her anger. “Thank you, though. For all of this.”
“You are most welcome. Now sleep, and know that you are safe.”
Time played in the hair of the god and the mortal. Eros wept for Psyche’s loneliness as, one by one, the treasures of the palace lost their beauty to her. Each day she walked solemnly through the palace, touching nothing, barely hearing the music of the invisible musicians. No smile split her lips. On the rare days when she ventured outside into the meadow, it was only to stand at the palace gate and stare at the mountain in the distance. What was she thinking, Eros wondered. Would she rather be married to that brooding monster?
It was only at night that Psyche broke her silence to speak a few words to invisible Eros. At first they were words of love, words dancing and glistening with smiles. But at the winds of time blew them further apart, they became begging words.
“Please, let me visit my sisters,” she pleaded in the darkness.
Eros hovered in the rafters, devouring the way her honey hair spread across the pillow. It was the fifth night she had spoken those words, and the other times he had told her no, for he could not bare to lose her even for a few days. Now, though, the crease between her brows and the loneliness graying her features broke his heart more than missing her ever could. “Yes,” he said. “You may visit them. I will bring you there, and at the end of the third day I will bring you back. We will leave in the morning.”
“No,” Psyche said. “We will leave now. The first day begins at sunrise.”
A cold, gathering anger filled the god of love. “Fine,” he spat. “Pack your things.”
The first day at her eldest sister’s home passed in a blur of half-feigned smiles. Psyche’s sister overflowed with almost maternal worry at the purple smudges under Psyche’s eyes. “Honey, all this time and you’ve told me nothing of this new husband of yours. How is he?” Her coy smile brought undertones to her words.
Psyche rubbed her forearm. “Oh, you know. Everything’s beautiful. The food is great. The location is divine.”
“But . . .” she prodded.
“But I want to know who I married.” She received only a blank stare. “He says that if I see his face, we can never be together. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe it would be better that way. If we weren’t together.”
“Oh, honey.”
“I just wish . . .”
“Well, you have to see him then. It doesn’t matter the cost. Psyche, listen to me. Here’s what you have to do.”
Psyche listened, and she agreed. It was time for things to change. The last two days of her visit were easier, marked by games of logic and conversations of ethics with her sister and her husband. At sundown, Psyche clung to her sister and whispered her love. She closed her eyes and let Zephyr, the West Wind, lift her high into the air and carry her across the city and the forest and the plain to the castle that had become her prison.
She walked the familiar halls until late at night. Never had she been out of her room so late. The music, ever-present in daylight, was absent; the place seemed foreign without its gentle lull. Strange shadows played out flickering dramas on the walls. Her footsteps echoed like heartbeats to the syncopation of distant water dripping into a barrel. Psyche hugged herself and walked through this nightmare landscape until she was absolutely certain that her husband was asleep.
She tipped a candle into a bank of coals in the great hall, cupping her hand about its sickly yellow glow. His room was nearby.
The first thing she saw was a pair of feet forming a ridge in the blanket. Was she sure she wanted to do this? The raised the candle to his face, dreading the monster’s countenance she was sure to find there.
But, ah! Her heart faltered. Her hand quivered. No monster rested in her husband’s bed, but a man whose beauty could only be described as godly. Psyche knew in one instant that her husband was none other than the god Eros, he whose power lies in love. All these months, she had been speaking to a god.
“Eros . . .” she whispered. Her hand, shaking with joy and love and disbelief, tipped the candle. Wax spilled onto Eros’ smooth, hard cheek and he startled awake.
“Psyche!” There was sorrow in his eyes. That sorrow dripped down his wax-stained cheek, a trail of grief. “Psyche, my love. What have you done?” He threw off his blankets, tossed open the window and soared off into the night, leaving her alone to stare at the form his body had pressed into the mattress. And then that, too, faded.
In all the world, that night, no woman cried as long or as hard as Psyche. She lay herself upon Eros’ bed, her form matched to his, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes so hard that she saw visions of stars whirling behind her lids. When she sun rose the next day, she found her old sandals and her old satchel. She slung it over her shoulder along with a loaf of bread and threw open the doors of the palace. When she set out over the meadow towards her home, it was with sure, strong footsteps, the stride of a woman who raised herself and knew she did it well. Her head held high, she parted the grasses and the winds and she walked. She promised herself that if she died in the process, she would get back the man she loved. She would get back the god she loved.
All that day she did not slow her warpath. Even when the only thing that kept her going was the rhythm of her heart and her feet, she held her head high and breathed with a forced calm. The next day was harder, and the day after was harder still, but she went on. When she arrived at her eldest sister’s house she simply stood outside, too tired to take even one more step. A servant carried her indoors and laid her on a bed. She did not wake for a very long time.
Eros stood in his mother’s chamber, in Aphrodite’s chamber. She looked even worse than before. It was as though all her thousands of years of life had caught up with her at once, leaving her a crumpled shell of herself. Not a single trace of her beauty remained.
“How could you?” she spat. “You marry the one woman in the world whose beauty rivals my own. You betrayed me, Eros. You betrayed all of us, all the gods. Leave! I never want to see you again. Leave!” Hatred curled like smoke in Aphrodite’s eyes. Eros could think of nothing to fix this. He nodded, his heart curling with guilt, and left.
Psyche left her sister’s house at sunrise. Tears crowded the corners of her eyes and overflowed down her cheeks as she climbed the steps to the temple of Aphrodite. She knelt on trembling legs. “Unsurpassed Aphrodite, whose gift is beauty, I kneel here today to ask your aid.”
Angry wind whipped through her hair.
“I am in love, Aphrodite, but some cruel force has ripped my husband from me. Please, I beg of you, help me.”
Hail jabbed her skin with a thousand tiny arrows; they pierced her heart.
“Show me the way to him. Show me the way to my love, to Eros!”
Psyche looked up. The hail and the wind died to nothing and there, at the altar, stood the goddess Aphrodite herself. She was too great to look upon, too high, too powerful, and Psyche looked away.
“Do not avert your eyes,” purred the goddess. And then, screaming, “Look at me!”
Psyche did, looked upon the goddess until her eyes wept not water but blood, until her own terrified screams boiled and fell away in her throat. The world and all its concerns seemed far away as Psyche and Aphrodite stared at one another. Their eyes fought for the god of love. Time threaded pack and forth between their gaze; minutes, hours passed and neither mortal nor goddess looked away.
And then, finally, Aphrodite broke the stare. “You have sinned,” she intoned. Malice spiked her words.
Psyche nodded, although she did not know what sins she might have committed. Her eyes bled with the agony of that long stare into the belly of Olympus.
The goddess stalked forward two paces. “You will learn, Psyche, that I am a goddess not prone to forgiveness. But there is one way that you might appease me.” She held out a small, plain box, a coy smile lighting her cracked lips. “Take this box into the depth of Hades. Find the Queen of the Underworld, the goddess Persephone, and return with the box filled with her beauty. I want her beauty. I need her beauty! Go! And hurry!”
Psyche nodded, but her heart was heavy. She knew the stories. No living soul returned from the Underworld. Those who somehow managed it were changed forever, altered by what horrors they had seen there. But it was for Eros, she reminded herself. Anything for Love.
At first, the descent was easy. She followed the River Styx on a steady downhill course, and she was so pleased with the simpleness of the journey so far that she stopped occasionally to contemplate a flower or exchange pleasantries with a passing sparrow. But then, as the afternoon of her second day recoiled into evening, things began to change.
The trees were withered here, wailing fingers raking at the tumultuous and distant sky. Flowers hung their weary heads and quit. The river, once a bubbling stream, became a stinking, sluggish snail creeping slowly towards Hell. She clutched the tiny golden box and advanced to what could only be her doom. When the darkness crept into her bones and surrounded her with crawling, itching, secrets, she curled into a tiny ball and tried to force herself into sleep. Finally, finally, sleep came.
Psyche dreamed. She was floating in a vast, cold emptiness. Around her, invisible things twisted and writhed, whispering in a language she could not understand. She knew that if only she could understand them, she would understand the key to everything. Everything. And suddenly, in the timeless way of dreams, Eros floated beside her, his heavenly features casting their own light into the blackness. Shadows fled from his beauty.
“Listen to me, Psyche,” whispered dream-Eros. “Listen to me very closely. I cannot follow you into Hell. Once you leave your sleeping-spot, I can help you no more. But this is what you must do:” And he spoke for a very long time. Psyche struggled to listen, for around her swarmed thousands of frozen souls, crying for her help. Eros spoke of the darkness that would seek to crush her, the bitter souls who would try to sway her from her path. She would face terrible demons and sights so beautiful they could be nothing but the root of evil. And as he spoke, he himself grew more magnificent, more perfect, until Psyche cried from the beauty of it.
And then she woke with tears still on her cheeks. She gathered herself together and continued on towards Hell.
Perhaps it was days, perhaps it was years, but Psyche walked through Hell until she could not remember what it was to be warm. She forgot about sunlight, forgot about flowers and birds and the light dance of a breeze on her skin. She faced up to the demons Eros had warned her of. She learned to ignore the desperate pleas of the souls around the path. She did not stop when hunger reared its head, or when she stumbled from exhaustion. She did not stop to drink at the pools of deceivingly fresh water by the wayside. She became entirely empty.
She stopped at the shore of a large black lake. It stretched as far as she could see, glistening in the light of some distant source. At the center of the lake, poised on her icy throne, sat Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld. She saw the small mortal woman standing at the edge of her lake and beckoned to the girl. Psyche, who had resisted the pull of more monsters and souls than she could count, was drawn by the goddess’ strength. She walked into the water until it covered her, until she walked on the ocean floor. Her honey hair blossomed above her head. She had no air to breathe, but she did not panic, for she knew in that instant that her time in the Underworld had made her something entirely different from a human. What, then, was she?
She immerged at the base of Persephone’s throne, clutching Aphrodite’s box to her chest with frozen, dripping fingers. She bit her lip and looked anywhere except at the goddess of death. Stories told that Persephone was altered by her life in Hell; that her beauty was a dark, brooding perfection marked by her hopelessness and anger. She leaned forward with the rustle of silk. “You are brave, mortal, to venture so far into Hell. I hope you find everything here to your . . .satisfaction.” A cruel smile twisted her lips.
Psyche had no time for pleasantries. She opened the box and allowed Persephone’s dark beauty to funnel inside. Atop her throne, Persephone screamed, a high, piercing scream that topped, for a blissful moment, the whispering of the tormented souls. Persephone lifted her hands to her face and screamed, screamed until her husband Hades himself appeared at her side. He looked down at little Psyche, the mortal, and her box.
“Better run,” he growled.
Psyche ran, clutching at the box, shoving her feet into the frozen soil of the underworld She ran past the corpses of the hundreds of monsters she had slain, past the voices of a thousand dead heroes. She ran for what could have been days or weeks or years, and behind her she heard Persephone’s wild scream and Hades’ footsteps. She ran until she could at last feel the sun on her skin, until she heard the rushing and bubbling of the River Styx. She ran even when Persephone’s scream faded and Hades’ footsteps turned the other direction and recoiled back into Hell. It is possible that, although Psyche’s feet slowed, her soul is running still.
Eros wept as he watched her run, but as he wept he smiled also. He smiled at her strength, her bravery, for as she walked through Hell and back she won them their happiness. He flitted above her as she ran, and leaned in closer to her as she collapsed at Aphrodite’s altar. Even this tortured, mangled shell of a human was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was in love with her.
And suddenly there was Aphrodite, his mother, goddess of beauty. She was ugly with greed and jealousy, curled with envy, but still he could see in her the way she used to be, before Psyche stole the title of most beautiful woman in the world. Aphrodite bent and snatched the box from the sleeping mortal’s grasp. She ate at it with her eyes. When she opened it, a brooding black cloud emerged, coating Aphrodite with a strange sort of beauty that seemed more dangerous than anything else. But she glowed with it, and for the first time in a very long while the goddess Aphrodite smiled. She turned to Eros. “You may have her,” she said dismissively. She disappeared with a flourish.
Eros knelt by Psyche’s side. He lifted her chin with his hands and brought her gaze to his. Her eyes were like small pinpricks of night; emptiness funneled through their inky pits. He whispered her name, and whispered it again, for he knew that something vital, something human in Psyche remained by the icy lake in Hades.
He pulled her into his arms and cradled her limp form. He sang her the songs he had once compelled other lovers to sing, songs in which happy endings won out and love conquered all. When she sun rose on the next day, he lifted her into his arms the way he might carry a babe and walked with her down the steps of his mother’s temple. Those empty eyes looked back at him, unseeing.
Eros wept. His tears dripped from the smooth skin of his cheek onto Psyche’s chest, her arms, her face. Surely this story must end in joy. Surely the god of love deserved his happy ending. Eros walked with Psyche’s body across all of Greece and when she still did not stir in his arms he walked with her all the way to the peak of Olympus. He set her down in the wide, airy halls of his home and sat with her for many days and many nights.
Some say he sits with her still.
Others say that some miracle came to pass. They say the Psyche coughed, blinked and looked into the eyes of her husband, her lover, her god. They say she sat up and they embraced while choirs of beautiful voices sang love songs from the clouds. They say that Psyche and Eros were never parted again.
Is this for Blink's contest?
