Wake, Siren Read online

  The moon slimmed and swelled nine times and still they knew nothing. Until another warm afternoon when all of us gathered around Diana and she was happy and weary from a hunt and said, “Let’s bathe in this spring! Cool off! Rest!” And everyone removed their clothes, all these lean, strong nymphs whose bodies were their own. “Callisto, come on,” they said, but I lingered to the side. “Come on, get in!” One started to tug at my clothes and I flinched from her touch. But they’d come to know one way or the other. So I pulled my cloak off and the forest went silent and they knew then what was true. Diana, who’d favored me more than all the others, spit on the ground. “You defile this place. Your body is not your own. Get away from me.” My shame seeped out from me, like the blood from that tear, and I wept as I wandered away, punished for being victim, outcast as though it was my fault. Would Diana have felt different if she’d seen how hard I fought?

  Diana wasn’t the only one who’d been disgusted. Juno, Jove’s wife, waited for the birth of my son to dole out her punishment, enflamed that Jove’s seed had taken root in me. I birthed a son I did not want. Arcas was his name. Juno arrived as I walked with him up a hill toward the cliffs. She grabbed me by the hair and yanked and slammed me down to the ground. I did not fight this time. I lay facedown and I felt her on top of me and all I said was please please please. If only she’d seen me fighting her husband. And I smelled the grass and the dirt and a shining black beetle headed away from my face and Juno’s knee pressed into my back, You think you’re so beautiful, you whore, tempt my husband, she said. Please, please, please. She was wrong. I never thought I was so beautiful. I was strong and fast and I loved the forest until her husband, in his violation, stripped the place of all its pleasures.

  I tried to beg, but my voice started to change and dark stubbly hair grew from my arms and my arms got thicker and my hands swelled and fingers fused together and thick claws grew from the tips with leathery pads below and my jaw widened and inside my mouth, which had been so familiar, my tongue slimmed and lengthened and the teeth inside were sharp. My back rounded and my legs shortened and widened and claws grew, too, from my toes. And a growl came out of me, deep like the sound of falling rocks, something dangerous and angry and scared. I bounded off, four-legged, unable ever to speak. And though I could see my strong claws and could wrap my tongue over my dark brown nose, my mind was my mind. And I did not let myself rest in the forest because I knew what could happen if you surrendered yourself to sleep, even for a moment. I wandered in shadows, exhausted, and when I saw other bears I forgot I was a bear and I feared them. Dogs chased me. I was hunted as I used to hunt. All the time I was scared.

  Even when, sixteen years later, I came upon my son in the forest, Arcas with bow and arrow, on a hunt with his friends, he who had been just a tiny baby when Juno ripped me to the ground and changed me, he with no knowledge of my fate or the violence of which he was the outcome. Our eyes locked and with a mother’s love I tried to tell him it was me, don’t be afraid, and I took slow steps toward him. But he didn’t recognize me. Of course he didn’t, this bristled beast in front of him. And he raised his arrow toward me and I thought, Yes, now, please, this is how I want to die, end the fear, and I raised myself on my hind legs and spread my arms apart to widen his target. My heart, my heart. And I hoped he had my gift of aim. I lifted my head and I smelled the smells of the forest, the sun on the leaves, the leaves on the ground, two rabbits nearby, a hawk swirled above us. I waited for the arrow to plunge into my flesh and stop my heart and end my fear and I roared once, the loudest roar, a roar so loud the rabbits fled and the birds fled and the earth shook. But Jove wouldn’t let it happen. Oh, no, for him, this crime was too much, a son killing his mother. Jove, perpetrator of violence, did he think he was correcting the wrong? That this balanced the scales? No, I bet not. I bet he did not give so much thought to it, that this, too, was simply a way of affirming his own power.

  He swept us up into the sky, where we are, now, even now, still now, a series of stars, big bear and little bear. I stay and burn and will stay and burn and my fire roars, but no one can hear it. I’m one of the luckier ones though, because I see the children on earth pointing up at me. Look, look, they say, the big dipper. It’s part of me, the lights in the sky that the children learn first. And I think: I wish I could scoop you up, young ones. I wish I could ladle you up into me and keep you safe for all time. I see them down there, pointing and smiling. I am not invisible. But I don’t want them to know that when I seem especially bright, when I blaze in the sky, it’s because I’m remembering that afternoon when my body was no longer my own.

  There are so many other stars, all of us burning. And I see all the stars around me, and I wonder, Are you the same as me? Is this what we all are? Fires fueled by fury, burning through the nights? Is that why you’re up here, and you, and you? No place on earth for a fury so hot and bright? For a roar so loud? I wonder this. I see some blazing brighter and I think: What are you remembering?

  AGAVE

  Help yourself to whatever. There’s some beer in the fridge. Wine’s on the counter by the cutting board. Is it too early for that? I don’t know—the kettle is probably still warm if you want tea. There’s like twenty different kinds in the pantry. I had some turmeric ginger earlier. Lemon, honey. Honestly, I can barely move. Is it Sunday? I literally have no idea what day it is. I can hear the mourning doves though. So it must still be pretty early. Did you hear them on your walk over? Sorry, you must be able to smell the wine evaporating out of my pores. I’m still scraping ox flesh out from under my nails. I haven’t showered yet, no. And no, no, none of that’s my blood. Ox probably. But, well. Yeah, most likely ox. And sorry, I know these cut-offs are short, but I want the least amount of cloth touching my skin right now. Like no chance I’m putting on a bra today.

  You’ve met Karen, yeah? My snake? Come here. Here, my legless one. You don’t have to hang out under the couch. She’s the only thing I can bear touching me right now. I love feeling her muscles move as she coils up my leg. I used to wear an anklet that had tiny bells that jangled when I stepped. Karen is much better. Sometimes she’s a belt, a garter, an arm band, a necklace. Around my neck like now. Last night I was wearing a necklace that had field mice strung through their eyeballs. When I woke up this morning she had five lumps, and I had no necklace. Anyway. This is Karen.

  But yeah, so things got a little debauched these last few days. A little frenzied. I think I’ve slept like a total of three and a half hours over the past four nights. I woke up today with the morning sun in one eye and felt like I was waking up for the first time in my life. Smeared in blood and dirt and fur, my hair snarled, grit embedded in my scalp. And in that half-awake state with my eyes closed against the sun, I started seeing fragments of what had happened. First, a swirl of color, all the garments open and swishing in the wind and swishing as we danced, as though we all had these satiny licks of flame of color surrounding us, coming out of us. Then a maenad friend of mine, she’s amazing, so strong, really thick-armed, in a dress the color of dawn, she’s holding a deer over her shoulders. I’m sure at some point she ripped its limbs off, but I don’t remember that part. I remember passing a vessel back and forth with one of the older maenads, and we gulp and gulp and it’s streaming down our necks and we’re laughing like fucking maniacs, who knows about what, and then she throws the vessel against a tree and the pieces weep down to the ground and we grab each other and spin. The drumbeat throb is getting louder, louder, louder, all of us moving in the rhythm of it, thumping, spinning, screaming in the pure and total joy of it. We thrust and flail. It’s starting to be just noise, just color, chaos, all the women’s bodies becoming just one body. It’s dark and the drums get deeper deeper louder and the lanterns blur and the light swirls as we move, as we’re swirling faster and faster, and smoke rises into the night. All these women swirling. And the drums are going going going, and the boundaries are starting to dissolve. And then it’s just abandon, everyone undone,
everyone in this state of boundarylessness, and there’s no sense of yesterday or tomorrow, of where I end and you begin, this ecstatic union with each other, all of us swallowed up in it, rising up in it, with the drumbeat throb, with the dissolving outward into everything. Time becomes no time, no past no future, we’re flung into infinity. And one of the last things I remember is seeing a maenad lying on her back and her dress is open and her hair is all pooling out on the earth and crows start coming out of her nipples, like hatched from there full-size and they keep coming and coming, crow after crow out of her breasts, beaks and wings and glittering dark eyes. And her eyes are wide like she’s never seen anything so beautiful, and the crows helix up into the sky, flying in spirals. And I remembering thinking, Oh, I’m watching a poem. I’m watching a poem made of crows. I’m watching a poem of no words. And that’s when things really shift, and I’m edging up against infinity, which means I’m as close as I’m ever going to be to death until I’m in it. Thereness and goneness. Total propulsion. And this is when sight doesn’t matter. And this is when language doesn’t matter. Oh god, this is especially when language doesn’t matter at all. Like maybe that’s one of the main parts about it. There’s no language. No words. And there’s no language to describe it. No words right now. I mean, these words aren’t even close. In these nights, I’m telling you, it’s unreal, like—an end to the limits of the self. And then you emerge. Having touched something very very big. I come out of it something else. I come out New.

  I remember you talking about that time in the mountains, when you woke up in the middle of the night having to piss and you went outside and looked up and it was stars everywhere. And you felt like you were swept up into the endlessness of it, that you were both dissolved and wholly there, and nothing mattered, that you could be blown off into the sky and that was okay. How it was the realest thing, edging into infinity, because that’s edging into death. And you said something about being the farthest away from everyone you loved, but feeling more a part of the world than you’d ever felt? Am I remembering that right? But so you understand. You understand about the ecstasy of it. Some people get it watching the gladiators. Or in sex. I’ve heard. Sometimes if you run for a long time. Music. Wine. Plants and herbs that bring you visions. Anything that changes time, dissolves the boundaries, makes you lose yourself, creates this swirling union with the All. But fuck, listen to me. Sorry. I get like this after these festivals. My brain is cooked. At some point after the crows I must’ve collapsed, depleted, unconscious, fully spent. I woke up, limbs draped over other limbs. Sticky, thirsty. I’m going to have some kombucha, do you want some? It’s fermented. A little hair of the dong.

  Dog.

  Better. Sorry. I got babbling there, and that’s not even what I wanted to tell you. I’m still blown away and some of it is still a blur. Like I have this sense of things happening but like all blurred edges, the way you remember dreams. I’m sure more will come back to me. But so anyway I hobbled home with another maenad friend and she was like, Did you see it? And I was like, See what? And she was like, Hang on, have you even heard? Heard what? About Pentheus? And I was like, Fuck that guy. And she was like Totally, but listen to this. So that’s why I called you over because I had to tell you this story.

  You know about Pentheus, yeah? Total prick. He’s this asshole jock, this clean-cut rapey beef-brained fucklet. He’s got that hair that’s way short on the sides and all slicked back at the top and he spends like sixty hours a week at the gym and is one of those way overchiseled dudes who you know spends like twenty minutes a day flexing at himself in the mirror. Like we all know that six-pack is to distract against your grubworm of a wienie, Pentheus. And he’s known for being gross about basically everyone who isn’t a white dude, like he’s 100 percent convinced that people who don’t look like him are going to topple civilization as he knows it (the civilization he’s been rewarded by under the system that’s stood for however long history has lasted). Just like a classic grade-A-sirloin angry asshole. And the dangerous kind, too insecure to let people live and let live and too dumb to know that insecurity is his problem.

  But so it turns out Bacchus is his cousin, which basically freaks him the fuck out. And Bacchus arrives on the scene—and you know Bacchus. He’s draped in purple robes, looking like the man version of an orchid, and he’s flaunting and partying and has ribbons blowing off him and garlands in his hair, and maenads and nymphs draped all over him, and he’s carousing and drinking and leaving grapevines in his wake, and people are going nuts, just, like, losing their minds for him. Like screaming and fainting for him. And Pentheus bugs out because Bacchus doesn’t fit into his idea of what a god should be. Like, this isn’t Mars, stomping around with trumpets of war blasting around him, all muscled and armored. And this isn’t Jove blasting thunderbolts and screwing any nymph he sees. Like just because Bacchus doesn’t conform to Pentheus’s narrow sense of manly-man godly-god, it means he’s a fake.

  And so Pentheus starts saying to anyone who’ll listen that Bacchus isn’t a real god, and everyone’s being tricked, and what’s wrong with you guys. And he sounds like this spoiled little child. Like, “Look at me, look at me, I have big muscles.” I heard him yelling at a group of people, “You guys are idiots if you believe this prancing queen is a god. This gaywad, this faggot, this she-man. This is no god, can’t you see that? He’s barely a man.”

  Put a sock in it, dick cheese. The good thing was that no one paid attention to him. Everyone was totally dismissive, like, Get a clue, dude, Bacchus is a god. Get on board. You’ll be happier. Because obviously. I mean, Tiresias forecast all of this, telling him, “You’re gonna regret being on the wrong side here. Like, you’re not going to believe in Bacchus’s god state, and you’ll live to wish you did.” And instead of actually listening, I heard he spit on Tiresias, asked where the other two blind mice were, and kicked him out of the kingdom.

  So no one’s listening to him trying to argue that Bacchus is fake and they’re all idiots for losing their shit over him, and so he orders some of his guys to go get Bacchus and bring him back to him. And like, are you joking? So his men try to do as they’re told, but obviously you don’t just walk up to a god just like, Yeah okay cool, here we are and we’re just going to tie your hands up with ropes and now you’ll be doing our bidding, you know? Like, Oh, I’m sorry, I’m actually immortal? And I can turn your ropes to fog or turn you into a marshmallow? So maybe back the fuck off? I feel bad for those guys. Talk about mission: impossible.

  But so they bring back one of Bacchus’s priests instead. And the guys present him to Pentheus and Pentheus is pissed, but he asks the priest why he’s into Bacchus. And then the priest gives this long-ass story about being a farmer and an orphan and having nothing then becoming a sailor and a ship captain and being on some island, and seeing Bacchus as a young boy and knowing for sure that this boy was a god, and the rest of his crew was like, Um, no, dude, that’s a hot young boy, and we can get a shit ton of money for him if we sell him. And priest man is like, You can’t sell a god! And they’re like, He’s a hot young runaway twink and of course we can sell him. And the kid asks the priest man to take him on a boat to Thebes and he agrees because he’s able to see the immortal shine in his eyes. But then there’s mutiny and instead of veering east toward Thebes the crew steers west, disobeying the captain, and ignoring the wishes of the smooth-skinned curly-haired love muffin they’ve got leaning over the taffrail looking out to the horizon.

  And I guess this is when Bacchus decides to reveal himself, which I get. It’s like, Oh, you think I’m some child to be sold as a slave? You think I’m powerless? Let me show you something. It’s like, I know for me it’s those moments when people think I don’t know something, or I’m not strong enough to open a jar or that I wouldn’t be able to understand how to fix the axle on my cart, or can’t string my own bow, or it seems like they think they know more about this or that, I feel this sort of wrath come over me, and this really almost frightening
sort of sense of power, like, Don’t you know I could destroy you right now? Don’t you understand I could talk circles around you and make your head spin and make you feel like nothing? Worse than you just did me? Like, You’re going to condescend to me? It makes me feel like I grow to like seven feet high and there are all these dark-furred, shadowy clawed creatures in my belly trying to get out to eat the face off whoever just felt like they knew more than me or can interrupt me or that their thoughts are more important than mine. I don’t want to generalize, but, I mean, typically, this is usually men over the age of fifty. And sometimes younger. But anyway, sorry, again, sidetracked. All to say, I get why Bacchus would’ve been pissed, being so totally underestimated.

  And you know, he can be destructive as fuck. Like, yeah, party and debauch and booze and whatever, but also, like, he’s a destroyer. And so they’re all on the boat, moving along, rising and falling on the waves, heading the opposite direction than what Bacchus wants, and the sun is shining and there are seagulls here and there, and then all at once, the boat stops. The waves haven’t stopped. The wind hasn’t stopped. It’s as though the boat dropped thirty anchors at once and they all hit sand simultaneously. It just simply stops moving. Right in the middle of the sea. And dudes are like, Oh fuck, shit ain’t right. Can you imagine how fucking terrifying that would be? Like, there you are, rolling along on the waves, carried by the wind and the current and suddenly, splash, you come to a complete stop. Man, it gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. So the boat stops and they’re all like, Shit, sensing that things are not good. And then, one by one, they’re ripped off the boat, their bodies are twisted, they grow fins, scales cover their bodies, and they’re dropped into the ocean as fishes. See ya.