Alcestis (3 page)

“No,” I whispered, her shift soft on my lips. “You can’t go, Hippothoe. Come back. You have to come back.” I pulled back to look at her face again, and now I noticed the blue tinge in her cheeks. Her feathery hair still lay damp with drying sweat. I stroked it, like petting an animal’s fur. I could not think.

A hand fell heavily on my shoulder. I looked up and saw my father, or a ghost of him, staring down at Hippothoe. Death was in his face. I recognized it.

My mouth came open, and I seized Hippothoe’s cool hand, twined my fingers around hers—I would keep her with me, refuse to let her go—and stared out defiantly at my father and his guests. They stood behind Pelias, insubstantial in the low light, women with white faces and men with dark pools for eyes, their forgotten cups dripping wine on the palace floor. I saw a hint of motion in the darkness behind them, something trailing quietly over the stone—the sound of cloth, the sound of something escaping, the hem of the god Hermes’ cloak dragging as he took my sister’s spirit away. I had not even seen him come to guide her; I had not even felt her go.

“Move, girl,” the king said, voice soft as wind. In the flickering light cast by the torches, I saw his sea-god father in his eyes. My grip slackened, and Hippothoe’s hand fell to her side and lay open and unmoving, her fingers curled as if she were still holding mine. Pisidice pulled me back, hard enough to make me stumble.

Pelias bent over Hippothoe’s body, her soft hair spilling in tangles over his arm as he lifted her. I could not see my father’s face, but the line of his godlike shoulders was heavy with sorrow. He stood for a long time with Hippothoe in his arms, his head bowed, and it was as if the entire room had stopped breathing when Hippothoe did. The servants, the children, the guests, the king: all of us silent and still in the great hall of the palace while the sheets of cloth hanging over the windows swayed in the dusty breeze.

I WAS NOT allowed to help prepare my sister for burial. Pisidice wasn’t either, and I heard her shouting at the head maid the morning after Hippothoe died: Why not, why can’t I do it, he isn’t even here to see. He’ll find out, the maid murmured. Pisidice came stomping back into the room and threw herself onto the bed, knocking me in the arm with her elbow. There was too much space in the bed without Hippothoe and Pisidice seemed to want to fill it.

“He always does this,” Pisidice said bitterly, her cheek jammed against the bed. “I hate it.”

“Always does what?” I mumbled.

“Goes away to kill beasts when he should be here.” She rolled over, away from me, her shoulder jutting up. “It’s my job to prepare her. I’m the oldest girl. I should do the rituals.”

I didn’t know what to say. Pisidice let out a sudden puff of air, a sigh and a sob together. She was trembling, I could see it, her shoulders shaking as she lay there.

“Pisidice?” I whispered. “Are you crying?”

“I want you to be quiet,” Pisidice said. “I want you to be quiet right now.”

I was quiet. If I reached out, she might pull away and leave me alone in the big bed. I squeezed my hands together until I felt bones grind beneath my skin. The sensation of touching Hippothoe’s cold hand came back to me and I shuddered and closed my eyes for a moment.

When I opened my eyes, Pisidice had fallen asleep. I watched her for a while, lifting myself up on one elbow to reach out and feel the warm air slipping between her open lips, to look for the flutter of blood beneath the pale skin inside her wrist. She didn’t wake as I curled closer. Her breath was regular and even. Her hair brushed against my nose and the smell of oil and flowers made me want to cry. I had not cried yet. Hippothoe was gone and I had not cried.

Hippothoe was on the other side of life, the world’s quiet underbelly. I imagined her standing by the dark river, her chin lifted and her chest still, waiting for the boat to come and looking across the water at the vast, gray line of the dead crowding the opposite shore. All those people, all vanished from some life, leaving gaps behind them, holes like the extra space in our bed. Hippothoe would have to stand among them. Would they frighten her, my brave sister? Would she shrink away from the dead? Or would she open her arms to them, pull another dead child to her side, murmur sweet words in a rough voice until those around her forgot their own fear?

She’d have to wait two more days before crossing the river. Her feet would get tired, I thought, from standing for so long. I wished I were with her, so she could take me in her arms. We would stand together and I would support her as I always had.

But Hippothoe wasn’t standing. She was lying dead in the king’s chamber with the serving women, who were cleaning her with sweet-smelling oil, wiping away the scents of garlic and dust and sweat, braiding her tangled hair—the hair I’d never get to twist between my fingers again, the smells I’d never again breathe. The grooming would make no difference in the underworld. Hippothoe’s feet wouldn’t tire, and the river air wouldn’t chill her, and nothing could ever make her hair behave, not even death.

I fell asleep and dreamed of running with Hippothoe through the asphodel fields, following her jagged laugh, timing my pace to her jerky, eager gait, still interrupted by pauses to catch her breath. When I caught her at last she was grinning, joyous, as she folded our hands together.

I woke later to find that the room had grown dim. Pisidice had rolled over while we slept and lay with a hand curled beneath her chin. Her other hand rested on the mattress between us, fingers clasped around my smaller hand.

WE STOOD IN a loose circle around the empty grave. It was near dawn, the sky gray, and my brothers were dark masses beside me, pinning me to the earth. I watched the men lower my sister’s body into her coffin. The body, draped in cloth, could’ve belonged to any girl. The torchlight cast long stripes of shadow over Hippothoe’s form, and I could see the point of her nose beneath the bier cloth, the bump of her chin, the twin nubs of her hipbones. Hippothoe’s chest was thin and flat as a boy’s, as my own. The men had laid lumps of bronze on her breastbone to pay her way across the river. A man would get a dagger, but Hippothoe would have no use for a weapon in the underworld, no need to show the other shades her former strength.

The servant women were crying. They had loved Hippothoe, though not like I had. No one had loved Hippothoe like I had, not Pelias, certainly not Pisidice, who stood now with her hair in an immaculate braid and her eyes perfectly downcast. The women’s wailing itched under my skin and I wrapped my fingers into the loose cloth of my skirt to calm myself. Pelopia nudged me with one elbow, a little bump like a mother cow nosing at a calf.

The men put the lid on the coffin, slid ropes beneath it, and lifted. It swayed on the ropes, and I remembered suddenly how much Hippothoe had liked the motion of a ship in the water, how she’d breathed easier in the salt air, how she’d exclaimed over the broken light dancing on the waves. Hippothoe’s mouth was closed now, bound shut with a strap of leather to trap her illness inside her dead body. I had a strange urge to yank the strap free, let my sister’s lips fall open—but there were no words dammed up behind the leather binding. She’d never call to me again, never sing out the first words of a prayer, never cry a welcome to sea gods or cloud gods, water or air.

Dirt fell on the coffin, making a hollow sound like a gong struck to call shepherds home. I watched the hole fill, the earth spreading in fans on the coffin lid, dry and powdery. Wind blew the dirt into the mourners’ faces, where it coated our lips and damp cheeks just as it had all summer. I felt the air gods gather behind us: a hidden ring outside our mortal circle, mourning my sister. They were sorry the wind had sickened her. A sprinkling of salt water fell from the dark sky, dappling the dirt, our clothing, Hippothoe’s body. A drop landed on my lip, and I licked it up like a tear, grateful to the local gods for their appearance. None of the Olympians had come.

The men finished shoveling. The grave mounded over the coffin, and I was glad that the wood planks would keep the earth from pressing in around Hippothoe’s body. Pelias lifted the libation cup to chest height, above my head, and torchlight flickered on the cup’s glazed bowl, which looked fragile in Pelias’s large hand. “For you who watch us,” he said loudly, as if he could force his voice to carry to Olympus, order his ancestors to care. He thought nothing of the love of the local gods and I hated him for it. I thought I saw the same fury in Pisidice’s face. “On this day we honor you, gods. We give you our daughter, Hippothoe. Accept her among you, and keep her with you forever. Lord Hades, Lady Persephone, give her rest and relief of burdens.” He stopped speaking, and the cup wobbled, his hand unsteady. Softly he continued, “I ask you, Father, watch my girl for me.”

Pelias tipped the cup and wine spilled out over its round lip onto the smoothed dirt. It soaked in almost at once, leaving a blood-dark stain on the grave, and I imagined it seeping through the soil and the lid of the coffin to stain the bier cloth and Hippothoe’s white shift. Pelias righted the cup and raised its empty bowl to the sky.

The air gods melted away like an exhalation. The servant women quieted their cries, and we all stood about, waiting for the king to speak again. Pelias lowered the empty cup. “Cover it before dawn,” he said, and walked back to the palace gates. Half the men followed him; the others remained to stand guard over the grave. I stared at the mound of dirt. A hand closed over mine, rough with calluses, male. I looked up the man’s arm and saw Acastus, his godly face serious. He pulled me into the funeral procession.

At the door to the palace the men and women separated to wash before the feast. Hippothoe’s body had been prepared in the king’s chamber, but the women had still set up braziers in the corners of our quarters to chase away illness and bad luck, and the place reeked of juniper smoke, a bitter-sharp scent that stung my nostrils. I rubbed at my eyes and pulled my headband off, pushed damp fingers through my messy hair. Pisidice shoved through the group of servant women and claimed a bowl of water for herself, taking it into the bedchamber. She didn’t close the door. I watched her struggle out of her bodice and strip her blouse over her head. Straight shouldered, her muscles flexing around the fine arches of bone in her back as she moved, her heavy braid hanging like a snake behind her. All the women in the room stared, waiting for Pisidice to shudder into sobs, but she pulled the white shift over her head calmly, without a sound.

The head maid frowned and brought me another bowl of water. “Wash your face, child,” she said, touching the curve of my cheek. “Your eyes look bad.”

I looked at my image, wavering on the surface of the water. I reached down, pulling away from the kind touch of the maid, and put my hands through the middle of my reflected face.

THE FUNERAL FEAST would last until Olympus crumbled, I was sure of it. I was sitting beside Pelopia, and no one remarked upon it when he wrapped his skinny arm around my shoulders and settled me against his side. He smelled more like Hippothoe than Pisidice did, but he was still not right, and I wriggled under the weight of his arm. He looked down at me. His face was solemn, no hint of a joke in his eyes. I hardly recognized him.