Wake, Siren Read online

  I tried to keep that big white wall from arriving in my life. And what I learned is that it’s not just about being finest at something, not just about being the very best. It’s about speaking it that way, too, about knowing it and owning it and saying it. I knew it. I knew I was the finest. And I said it. I had pride.

  “This is the most amazing weave work I’ve ever seen,” people said.

  “Thank you. I haven’t seen work that’s finer myself,” I’d say. Grateful, yes, and also knowing. Say what you know.

  Once a person whispered: “You must have learned from Minerva.”

  Wrong. I learned from my dad and I learned from myself. And the fact of it was, I was better than Minerva.

  And then I wondered why I wasn’t saying that out loud. You don’t get to be big in this world if you don’t know how to own your skill. You don’t get over that smooth wall if you don’t go after the thing you’re good at with everything you’ve got. And even then, other walls might rise.

  So I started saying it out loud. “I taught myself, and I’m better than that weaving goddess. Any single day of the week I could outweave Minerva. She should come and try me.” I liked the way it sounded. “Get yourself down here and we’ll see who’s best,” I dared her. They’ve got a lot of power, but we’ve got power, too. More than they want us to think.

  An elder lady with a gray knot of hair and cheeks that dangled off her face like thin-sliced meat had the nerve to tell me to take it easy. “It’s enough to be the best in the world that you know,” she said. “You don’t have to outdo the gods.” She said something against outgrowing my britches, that I should think about taking back what I’d said about outweaving Minerva. That I should think about apologizing.

  Old ladies think they know. She comes into my place to watch me weave and look at what I’ve made and thinks she can tell me a thing? No. She’s lucky I didn’t smash her face, because that’s what I wanted to do. All people do is tell you why you can’t or won’t or never will or shouldn’t try. These scared old ladies. “You’re old,” I told her. “You’re old and the years got you dim. I never asked once for your advice. I advise myself. I’m sure of myself, and it’s hard for you to hear. And I’ll keep standing by what I said. Minerva should come and try me.”

  “So be it,” the old lady said, and she showed herself to be Minerva in disguise. The other folks in the room bowed and gasped and clutched their hearts. Not me. I stood with my shoulders back and my eyes front. I hold my own is why. The blood that rose to my cheeks in blush, it was surprise, and it was pleasure. I was getting what I wanted.

  That’s a chance.

  I sat at my loom. She had hers. We started. My blood moved faster. I raced the shuttle back and forth across the warp, the strands collecting. It’s what I’d spent most of my eyes-open hours doing. The weight of the shuttle in my hand, the speed of the slip through the wool, the treadles up and down, the squeaking, I knew this all, like it was my own body, as familiar as the inside of my mouth, as familiar as the weight of my leg, the sighs from my belly after a meal. I was motion and color and threads combining and I could tell, in a blurred way, that I was doing the finest I’d ever done. The patterns and shapes kept coming and awareness as to how it happened left me, like I had disintegrated into just the making, gone from myself, and just aiming energy toward the wool. The best of all feelings. And never more so than in this session at the loom.

  At some long periphery, like she was in another galaxy, Minerva worked with fury. Now and then I heard her breath and heard her swish the shuttle across the wool. The sweat slid down my back, my shoulders ached. I didn’t care what she was doing. I barely knew what I was doing, only that I was doing it, it was happening, and it was fine.

  Minerva finished first. She spread the tapestry and all I saw from the side of my eye was a weave of olive branches around the edges. Peace offering. It made me work harder and faster and bolder. She wanted peace because she knew I was going to win. There’d be no peace.

  I near collapsed off my stool when I finished and a woman nearby had to hold me up. I couldn’t believe it when I saw what I’d done. I’d painted with wool. I painted my whole poor world versus all the deathless gods who live guiltless. Who live guiltless and without consequences. All we know is consequences. We’ve got mountains of consequences on top of us that press us and bury us and keep us down.

  That’s the bull raping Europa, and the waves looked so real you’d think your hand would come away wet if you touched it.

  That’s the eagle before he violates Asterie, carrying her off in his talons.

  That’s Leda, getting herself crushed underneath the swan.

  That’s Jove disguised as a satyr giving Antiope twins inside her.

  That’s Jove turned into gold spray and entering Danae unconsenting.

  That’s Jove in the form of fire, tricking Aegina.

  That’s Jove playing a shepherd, fucking Mnemosyne nine nights in a row.

  And Neptune, as a bull, Neptune as a ram, a stallion, a bird, a dolphin, tricking us on earth. All the lies. All the power over people. Power born of layers and layers of lies. And Phoebus as a hawk, a lion, a shepherd, lying, tricking, fucking. And all those gods, all those deathless ones. They never met regret. They don’t fear mistakes because they don’t know consequences. Never guilty, never punished. I showed you all, showed each crime, showed all you criminals. And yet we’re the ones to pay. How’s it work? You murder. You rape. You violate. And it’s us who fall. Why am I the only one to say it?

  I say the names of all the fallen.

  Europa, Asterie, Leda, Antiope, Alcmena, Danae, Aegina, Mnemosyne, Proserpina, Bilsaltes’s daughter, Aeolus’s daughter, Medusa, Melantho, Erigone, and so many more. Taken down in innocence. I showed the truth.

  And was it an accident that I showed this guardian of virginity as many sexual violations as I could fit on a tapestry? Nope, it sure wasn’t. And of course she didn’t like being bested, and of course she didn’t like the feeling one bit that some poor mortal could outdo her. But I’ll go ahead and bet that her reaction came from this mirror held up to her and her world, seeing the twisted immoral forms “love” could take, knowing she’d done nothing to guard in them what was sacred in her.

  So what did she do? She acted like a brat child. She grabbed what I’d just made. And she started tearing. She shredded it. This god, this deathless one. All those scenes. All that color. All those crimes made clear for all eyes to see. Too much. She tore it apart. I stood. I watched. Finest thing I’d ever made, truest tales told, in tatters. Something drained out of me, seeing that work a wreck. Some force I had just seemed to slide right out of me and a tired landed on me like it had never landed before.

  But tearing it apart wasn’t enough for her. She needed me to know better what was what so she took my boxwood shuttle in her hand, whose weight I knew like it was my own bones and blood. She grabbed it and she hit me. I have been in fights. I know how it feels to be in danger that way. When there you are maybe yelling some, maybe fighting, and you’re on your two legs and then your arms get grabbed and you get thrown and you fly through the air into a bureau or a wall, tossed like a sack of laundry. It hurts but it doesn’t hurt because you know how to leave yourself. It hurts but it doesn’t hurt because all your thoughts are on exits.

  But all the fight was out of me. All the energy was out of me. It had left me when I saw what I’d made in shreds on the floor. Like I could do the very finest thing of all, and still, instead of praise, I get punished. You do wrong. You get punished. You eat Skittles. You get punished. You stand in the wrong place. You get punished. What drained the energies right out of me is that you do right, you do finest, you do the best undeniable, you still get punished. That big white wall I’d been trying to avoid, it rose up in the moment where all the walls should have come right down. I got tired the way Sylvia got tired. Minerva hit me once, twice, three times. I took it. Four, five, six. Across the forehead. I felt the blood slide down an
d in toward my eye. Seven and that’s when I knew enough. And I took what energies I had and I grabbed a rope and I noosed the loop and quick I strung it over my head to end it. There was no going any further.

  Oh, but then Minerva takes pity. She says, “You’re deserving not to die, but you’re still deserving punishment.” You know what’s next? I live, but I live eight-legged. An angry little spider. Weaving webs, and they’re as fine as you’ve seen. I still go. I find my way. She thinks: harmless spider. She thinks: she doesn’t do harm and her webs can be invisible except in the dew, and they’re weak enough to get swatted through with a broom, and people won’t come to look and sigh and wow. And if they do, the next thing they’ll do is wipe the web away because folks don’t want spiders all around. Let her think it. Let her think how harmless. Let her think she did a good job punishing. But I learned about consequences. I learned how certain choices echo back and pin you.

  Besides being turned into a spider, I heard Minerva say another thing. So it wasn’t just the finest thing I’d made, and it wasn’t just the beating, and it wasn’t just the being turned into a spider. “This is how you’re going to live. And this is how all who descend from you will live.” If I had babies, they’d be spider babies, is what she was saying. She went on. “Understand what it means? You fear the future.”

  Didn’t she know? I guess she didn’t. You live the way I live, you grow up the way I grew up, you watch what happens to the people it happens to, all you do is fear the future. There’s no other choice. You’re rich, you’re guiltless, you’re deathless, the future’s something to fill with boats, ambrosia, giant pets, afternoons that last forever, every sunset seeming like it’s there for you. It just becomes a question of what to do with the fear. Same way I had my dad’s words and I found my way before at the loom, I find my way now. I fear the future, so you know what I do?

  I have babies. I have babies and babies and babies. And they live for a bit and then what happens, my babies have babies. Each of my babies has babies. There are already babies beyond you can count. Picture as many of us as you can. And then more because it keeps going. And how many babies will my babies’ babies have, and how many babies will my babies’ babies’ babies have? Oh, more than you can count. We will be so many. And we will keep coming. More and more together. We find our way. We’re doing it right now. Do you know? Who should fear the future? You.

  CALLISTO

  I am a bear.

  * * *

  I live in the sky.

  * * *

  When I was young and I wasn’t a bear, there were always leaves in my hair and dirt under my nails and when I found pine needles in my pockets I would break them in half and smell them. I wore the clothes I wore because they were right for the life I lived. They let me move the way I wanted to move, and I moved well. Strong, fast, I had long legs and my lungs took in so much air. I traveled the forest with my quiver and bow. Other women bent over sewing at home. Other women bore babies. Not me. Not then. I was out in the world, in the woods, on my own, and I knew I was lucky to know what I wanted and be good at it, too.

  Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt, saw how good I was and she prized me. It’s hard to think about those days in the forest now—sometimes I’ll be up here and I’ll think about the trees towering, the birch and oak and aspen, the leaves making lace against the sky and the light falling through it. I’ll think about the ferns and the moss—the glowing green of the moss!—and the twisting roots that swell out of the ground. I’ll think about the small creatures and the large ones, the brooks and springs. The hollows, the ditches, the mushrooms the color of bone that rose at the bases of the dogwood trees after a rain, the maiden grasses with their silvery sprays that swayed in the meadows, and the secret groves that only I knew. I can’t think too long because every time I do I end up returning to that afternoon in my mind and my memories of the wood turn stinking and hot. And once I’m there I can’t go back and I burn with the memory of it. And now I’m burning again so I’ll tell the story I retell myself all the time.

  It was one of those days that burns from the start. I’d been hunting all morning. The small flowers were my friends, white and purple, and the small birds who darted branch to branch, and the summer soaked into my bones. My body was damp with sweat and I went to a place I often went to rest, a circle of birches and juniper trees, all ancient, in a corner of the forest where no tree had heard the sound of an ax thudding through the trunk of one of its brothers or sisters. The ground was soft, bedded with needles, and the shade felt especially sweet and it was private. I hung my bow on a bough and took my quiver off my back and laid it on the ground near the base of the biggest juniper. I stretched my body out on the ground and rested my head on my quiver. It felt so good to surrender my weight to the earth and the air was thick with heat and the smell of the juniper. The needles and the berries, blue-gray like the sky at the end of a rainstorm, began to blur above me as I let myself drift toward sleep. Birds chittered around me and the summer bugs sang their lulling buzz. My sweat dried on my skin, tightening the way it does after you’ve been in the ocean. I fell asleep, not that long, the sun hadn’t moved an hour’s worth across the sky. Something stirred me awake and there at the edge of the circle of trees was Diana, staring at me and smiling between two birches.

  I leaped up and rushed to embrace her.

  “Where’ve you been hunting today?” she asked.

  I spoke fast, words tumbling out like a brook, and gestured to the east, my hands flying in excitement. Diana interrupted my talk and pulled me toward her with another hug.

  I’ve thought on it now for centuries. Somewhere, I knew. In the dark place we forget to trust. And I ask myself over and over: Why didn’t you run? Her voice was Diana’s voice, her face was Diana’s face, but there was something not right—how to explain it? When she wrapped her arms around me I remember thinking, This is not her smell, not the smell I know of hers, of woods and blood and wildflowers. That day it was something hungry, of onions and skunks and the pissy tang of the fox den. She held me differently, lower on my back, with greater strength. She kissed my cheek and I kissed hers and right then I felt something strange, and all at once it was as though I was watching from outside. She kissed my cheek again and her lips lingered. And then she kissed my mouth and I could smell her and she didn’t smell like herself and that’s when the kiss changed.

  Her tongue in my mouth, filling my mouth. No one’s tongue but mine in my mouth before that. And her hands reached up under my cloak and I don’t know if I’d had my eyes closed before but they were open now and I saw that it wasn’t Diana at all. It was Jove disguised and something pressed against my leg and the one thing he said was Don’t you scream. And he pulled off my clothes and swept my feet from beneath me and I felt the full weight of the god on my body and I thrashed and I kicked and I bucked my hips as hard as I could, not in pleasure but defense, and I used my teeth and my nails the way the animals do when they’re angry and scared. And he pressed himself into me and there was a tearing and a bright hot pain and a liquid heat that I felt on my thighs and I knew there’d be blood. But I did not scream. I did not cry out. I fought and fought and there was dirt in my mouth and tears all in my eyes and the birch and the juniper blurred and his skin under my fingernails, the onion stink of his skin.

  He huffed and bashed himself into me, again again. He took my breast in his hand and used his tongue on my nipple and kept huffing and panting and I elbowed his head. His thighs were thick as the oak trees, but I did not stop thrashing. His wide, flat tongue all over my neck, and above me the sky through the leaves. Finally it was done and he was gone and I lay in a heap on the needles and leaves and felt slick all between my legs, but I couldn’t look down. There was a scent I’d never known from myself, like the white-petaled Callery pear that blooms in the spring, that acrid musk, that honeyed floral tang with something unwashed below it, something of flesh, from a place deep in the body. Rotten, what he spilled in me. My whole bod
y shook. Why didn’t I run? Slowly I gathered myself. I brushed leaves from my hair and pulled twigs from my back that were pressed deep into my flesh. A mud puddle nearby from a recent rain, and I washed myself with the mudwater and I looked around and I hated every tree. I hated every root and rock. I hated the paths and the shadows and the light. I hated the smells. I hated the smell of the forest. I hated that grove of trees. I hated it all with everything in me. I put clothes over my body and began a slow walk away from the grove. The birds screamed. I don’t know how long I walked and I don’t know what direction I went. I heard rustling in the brush, twigs snapping, soft voices, and there through the trees I saw Diana again, and my heart flew like a rabbit’s heart flies, red wet heart flying inside me, because I thought it was Jove again, disguised and back to take my body as his own. But then I saw other nymphs and they were smiling and laughing, game on their shoulders. Diana called out to me and I approached slowly, dripping with shame. I could not meet their eyes, though they embraced me and showed me their kill. I stayed silent and my face was flushed, my cheeks burning. They all must know that I am ruined, I thought. They see it. They know. I kept my eyes on the ground and held a small stone in my hand and clutched it. But they didn’t know. None of them knew. None of them knew because none had been touched the way I was touched and none had been wrecked the way I was wrecked and what was torn in me would never be torn in them and I was alone in my knowing and this was not a relief.