WHO: Hecate and Melpomene WHEN: From the 21st December till the 1st of January, though much of it is set New Years Eve WHERE: Sleepy Hollow, Soho, The Hole, Astoria WHAT: No one's happy with their lot WARNINGS: Some talk of death
I need to regain my center before I can help you, but Clio, I will help you.
Hecate inspected the burn on her forearm, smoothing a poultice made with ash of myrtle across her singed skin. Behind the grate, the fire burned wickedly, and at the doorway of her sitting room, Hecuba watched warily from the door. The burst of flame that resulted in what should have been a simple spell to light the fire had caught her arm, her hair, a good portion of the rug and had startled Serene and Gal so badly they’d both vanished. Hecuba, not startled but still, not stupid, and left the room too, growl rumbling low in her throat. Only Yew – one of the three snakes who’d followed her back – remained in the room, and that was because he was content to bake beneath his heat lamp.
Aitana, the ghost of a witch who’d died a day after Hecate returned to life and had decided to hang around for a bit to witness this transition, was pacing the room and voicing her opinions in aggravated Spanish. Yew watched her pace, his head resting on his back.
When Hecate had told Clio she’d help, she had hoped it would only be a day or three before she found her centre, but this assumption proved erroneous. Her arm spent the rest of the night wrapped in clean bandages, and though her skin healed nicely by morning, Serene still refused to go near the fire, and Gal had taken up a position by the safe, electric heater of one of Hecate’s neighbours. Hecate let her magic rest, and spent much of the night in meditation, interrupted only by Aitana.
But then Artemis too, asked for help. I’ll start my search at moonrise she'd said. Of the Olympians, Hecate had always had a lot of time for Artemis, and Hecate had been impressed with the brave heart of Maid Marian on their hunt together. Marian’s capture by the Sheriff of Nottingham was exactly the kind of kidnapping she sought to undo, even though Marian prayed to a different god.
Come moonrise, Hecate tried a variation of the spell she’d used to locate the hellhound, with a candle of beeswax dyed red as a fox, red at Marian’s hair. When she lifted the candle to flick the droplets of wax across a map of the country, the flame lashed out in a circle, the entire candle melted instantly in her hand, and the wax poured in a straight red line that cut across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, a bit of northern Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California and off into the Pacific Ocean.
The scorched palm that held the candle spent the night in poultice and clean bandages, too.
She could give the map to Artemis, reasonably certain the despite the burns, there was a high chance Marian was somewhere along that line, but the amount of land it covered was enormous, and the uselessness of the map was sort of embarrassing. Hecate was reluctant to try again; she was running out of burn cream, and each time a spell backfired on her she felt worse, a little further from her old self. She was trying too many things too quickly, she needed to rest and to heal and to bloody well calm down.
The calming down was not helped by her conversation with Ares. Oh, sure, the news that her death was the fault of his rogue men, and not Ares himself, could have been worse, she supposed? But talking to Ares was just so annoying. She was half tempted to curse his dick, seal his mouth shut and be done with it while she started a new life in Virginia.
The news that the one who’d killed her was Melpomene’s chosen (the one she’d cursed twice, she wondered, or just the once? The one with the ghost at his back when he’d sold her Serene or the one who’d been viciously handsy with Luna?) wasn't restful news to receive, either.
Add to that the news that Ares daughter (Marcella? Did she know a Marcella?) had killed Apollo, and you had more than one mortal killing more than one god in less than one month, and, well…
It all make Hecate take another step toward being miiighty sick of Greek politics, though she wasn’t quite there yet: she was still planning to attend Peitho’s New Years, after all, and chances were high that it was going to be a tinderbox. Apollo would probably be back by then and there’d be no keeping him away, and if Aphrodite attended perhaps she’d bring Marcella, or worse, Ares, and if that happened Hecate wanted to keep an eye on Luna. And when had Melpomene ever missed a party, especially one with such tinderbox potential?
So beneath the sun on the final day of the year, she sent off a missive to Athena, to Artemis, to Apollo, and then paid the muse a visit.
A series of late nights were weighing on Melpomene, late nights and days full of loss. She was used to nights that stretched into the small hours, but these days her child was growing fast and her energy was not her own. She fought not to let it slow her down, but it was not the only thing she was fighting.
Last night she and Alan had driven through New Jersey, looping around street by street. It had been a long drive, and through it she’d asked, and he’d given, stories of Marian. Tell me of other rescues she asked him, letting him speak as she drove, tell me all the times you’ve saved her after he took the wheel. It hadn’t been their first night like this and wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes they just drove in silence, hands entwined. Sometimes, since Apollo’s death, she’d taken to telling stories about him to fill the silence, the ones where he was music and light, health and youth. Sometimes they arrived home so late the sun was flirting with the horizon, sometimes they were too tired to make love and she’d pull him into her arms and he’d be asleep, instantly, against her. Other times they’d bury themselves in each other so desperately, hold on so tightly it was like the only thing saving them from oblivion was each other.
The only thing the nights had in common: no Marian, no Apollo. Just stories of their lives that both Alan and Melpomene needed to keep telling themselves.
Apollo and Marian, their loss wasn’t the same, of course. Marian was in the grips of her mortal enemy and that was a very solid, real fear. Apollo was just gone, and there was no body, and no hint of who killed him except the crazed words from Cassandra. And he wasn’t back yet, and every day that truth didn’t change Melpomene felt more and more like someone had ripped off one of her arms.
She kept thinking it, feeling it, believing it, and wanting to say it out loud to her sisters, who were supposed to understand, but her rage at what she predicted Urania would say in return stopped her. You’re being dramatic, her sister would dismiss it all. The pure offense Melpomene felt when Urania spoke sometimes, it was gut-wrenching.
‘Dramatic’ like it was an insult, ‘dramatic’ like that wasn’t one of the elements their very beings were made from.
After her last conversation with Urania she’d gone to find Alan, kiss me? she’d asked, remind me I was once a goddess? She never would have said was once with anyone but him, but Alan-a-Dale had a way about him that dissolved her pride, which would have been unbearable – she could not stand to be vulnerable - if it wasn’t paired with a kiss that made her feel holy.
Anyway, she was refusing to talk to Urania now, while furiously wished someone would kill her, and show her what it felt like.
Okay, no. In her heart, Melpomene didn’t really want her sister dead. But she did want her to feel something. To stop shitting on Melpomene whenever she did feel something, to stop looking down on her like feeling was the worst thing a person could do. Melpomene hated people looking down on her, and for it to come from her own sister was tenfold worse.
So yes, the feelings translated quite nicely into die.
Melpomene wasn’t doing so well without her arm.
The days of loss were cut with such mundane things as work, which never used to be mundane, but these days the writing didn’t stretch to fill the cavern inside her. Every time one of her colleagues called her Romeo she mentally flinched. I’m Melpomene she wanted to snap. I’m the Muse of Tragedy, I’m the reason you’re so good, honour me, as you would have done once! She clenched her fists under their shared table, and inside her, her war-child rolled himself over.
He took up vast areas of space inside her mental landscape, too. This tiny boy, fated for greatness. Oh she was so sure he was fated for greatness. She let Ares’ words sing inside her: An auspicious start, then. Might amount to something after all. She liked to imagine a slight twitch of Ares’ lips when he’d written that. She did not need Ares involvement in this child’s life, no, but she did enjoy his pride.
The baby pulled her attention from the agony of knowing the world no longer contained Apollo, but the agony remained, as part of her, even when she was not looking at it.
What she longed for, more than anything, was to go back to Alan’s and have him whisper her name across her skin as he kissed her, or to sit behind him on the couch while he sat with his guitar on the floor. Her hands craved the feeling of him; what she wouldn’t give to be running her fingers through his hair while he composed songs for his friends, songs to help them stitch their broken psyches back together.
But today what she had was work meetings and grief and a large box of cake she hadn’t been able to walk past on her way home. What she had was the afternoon to herself because Alan was out searching, and he’d lose time and distance if he drove back to Soho to pick her up, now. She’d see him again tonight, she hoped: she’d sent him a message anyway wherever you are tonight, let me be there with you. The old year was dying, a new one beginning; she wanted to be at Alan’s side when the year turned over.
But tonight was hours away, and this afternoon she had this: a feeling of incompleteness, a growing fear that all their divinity was gradually fading away, a two layered chocolate raspberry gateau.
And – someone else.
Tired as anything, Melpomene paused at her apartment door, sensing a presence on the other side.
Her door was unlocked, and hung slightly open. If Alan was with her, he’d be all tense alarm, stepping through the door in front of her, afraid but fiercely protective nonetheless.
But it was not the Sheriff, she could tell that already; the presence was Greek, and strong, and her heart and her stomach felt as though they changed places in her body. “Apollo?” she said, the rush of hope that went through her was enough to make her physically dizzy, and she pressed a hand against the wall for support and – stopped up short.
“I’m sorry, no,” Hecate said, her voice gentle in a way Melpomene could not handle, and disappointment and grief stabbed her, made her want to stab something right back. “You just let yourself in?” she demanded. Disappointment, grief and embarrassment; Hecate had only messaged her about a visit a few hours ago, and her mind had just let it slip right out.
“The door unlocked without any intent on my part,” Hecate said, rising from the couch to greet her. “And the wind pushed it open.”
“The wind,” said Melpomene, dumping her box of cake on the kitchen island. “Sure.”
Hecate shrugged, it had been true. It was also true, too, that gusts of wind had been circling her for the last couple of days, that last night a windstorm had blown violently through her garden in Sleepy Hollow, her garden and no one elses’. It was less painful than the fire, but there was no simple balm she could spread on her garden, and the branches that had been ripped from their trunks would take longer to heal than her arms. She had saved the branches, to make something of the wood (Aitana had several suggestions) but that didn’t change the wounds their removal had left on their mothers.
So, yes, the wind had blown Melpomene’s door open, and an inquisitive breeze was circling the apartment, rustling the leaves of the potplants and the ends of Melpomene’s hair as she unfastened her coat.
It was a coat as thick as a New York winter demanded, a thickness that disguised the swell of her belly till she unfastened the silver clasps and let it slip off her shoulders.
War and Tragedy have become tightly entangled since the summer, Athena had said.
Oh, thought Hecate. Very tightly entangled, then.
Annoyingly, Melpomene found she believed Hecate, about the door, about the lock. Doorways readjusted themselves for Hecate, locks readjusted, even the wind readjusted. Melpomene believed her, but she was not happy about it, and it had nothing to do with an invasion of privacy. “You can magic up your own cake then,” she said bitterly, slicing herself a piece before sitting down in the nearest armchair where she could remove her uncomfortably tight boots, saucer balanced on the wide arm.
“I don’t need any cake, thank you,” Hecate said, taking a seat on the edge of the couch at rightangles to Melpomene. “I take it from your reaction that you have not seen Apollo either?”
Melpomene winced. “No,” she said. Oh, the truth was a painful thing. Hecate sighed and ran her hand over her hair, braided in a thick dark rope down her back. A sigh was not good enough of a response and Melpomene narrowed her eyes. “Do a spell,” she commanded, yanking off her second boot. She probably needed to stop wearing them so much and find something more comfortable, but there were worse pains in the world right now, and Melpomene was stubborn. “Necromance him back if you have to. It shouldn’t be taking this long.”
“But it is taking this long,” Hecate said, infuriatingly matter-of-fact about it. “He’ll return to us all eventually, Melpomene. His name is too well known for it to go any other way.” What concerned Hecate was what he would do when he was back. Yes, the mystery of what was taking so long was interesting, but Hecate had a long list of ‘interesting’ things to take up her time and he did not make the top three. Let others – Artemis, Melpomene – worry about that. She was not going to waste her magic on necromancy when she had Maid Marian to find, and before that, even, herself to put back to rights.
Hecate sounded like Urania – calm and certain and detached (in truth she was one of these three, at most) – and Melpomene tightened her fist around her fork as fresh anger bubbled to the surface.
The absolute worst part of her fight with Urania was the knowledge that Urania was right. And Hecate was right. He’d be back. He wasn’t anywhere close to being forgotten.
Their rightness missed the point completely.
“He never should have died in the first place,” Melpomene said. “Death should not have touched him. Nor you.” We were above it all, once she left unspoken. It sounded too much like she was the caged animal Urania had accused her of being.
“No,” Hecate’s voice took on a new dimension, one the wind outside seemed to echo. “I shouldn’t have. And that brings me neatly to the point of my visit: tell me, Melpomene, about this mortal you’ve taken an interest in, the young man in Ares’ ranks,” Hecate said, causing Melpomene to whip her head toward her. If the look she’d thrown at Hecate had been physical, it would have had her pressed against the wall.
Tragos she thought his name, protective or possessive; fierce, whatever the root of it. “He’s none of your business.”
“He is, actually,” Hecate pulled apart the folds of her own coat, and pushed down her top. A dark stain like trapped blood beneath her skin marked her breast and spilled into the valley between, and another was revealed over her opposite ribcage when she pulled her hem upwards. “These are the marks the bullets made when they left my body,” Hecate said, watching Melpomene’s eyes as she took in the marks, realisation and denial all at once.
“You’re saying he did that to you?” Melpomene was reeling. Horrified and fascinated, she leaned forward toward the marks, mind racing as this new information upturned everything. Were these symbols declarations of war between the gods? She tried to think about the timing, Hecate’s death and Tragos’ punishment over his trysts with Marcie, and couldn’t fit the puzzle piece of a murdered goddess in. Oh Tragos. She needed to see him.
“You didn’t know?”
“Did Ares order this?” Melpomene came back with a question of her own to save herself from saying no, I did not know. Admitting her own ignorance stung, however she worded it. She should not have to answer to Hecate.
“He did not, if he is to be believed,” Hecate said, smoothing her top down “But I believe that if he assassinated me, he would claim it. And he would not do it before he had the strength to deal with what such a claim would mean to him. So no, your man acted alone. Or, he acted with his brother. What are your intentions with him, Melpomene? Do you mean for him to be out, shooting gods in the back?”
“I didn’t tell him to kill you, if that’s what you’re insinuating,” Melpomene’s jaw clenched tight.
“It was not,” Hecate said, though she was relieved to hear it. “Your intentions, Melpomene?”
“My intentions did not get you killed,” Melpomene stabbed a fork blindly through her cake. “The world is a cruel, messed up, complicated place. It hurt me, to hear about your death, but my intentions did not play into it.”
“Not directly,” Hecate said, annoying Melpomene even more because she was speaking so calmly, and Melpomene felt anything but calm. She could feel the balance of power here and it was not in her favour. “But if your influence led to me getting shot in a park, then I want it stopped before more harm is done. Had his aim been off a fraction, he could have killed someone else.”
Stopped? “It’s alright for you,” Melpomene snapped viciously. “With your covens and your witches in dark pockets across this country. Some of us aren’t so lucky. Some of us have to build our own worship.”
Melpomene could barely remember what she had felt like, before Tragos knelt in the bloody sand at her feet and called her my lady, before Ares lay her down on the amphitheater dais and called her Melpomene Areia .
Ares had asked, once How are you finding having an acolyte again, after all these years? and she’d admitted It feels like a feast when I've been living on scraps.
She would not go back to existing on scraps.
“Is that the worship you want?” Hecate asked. Oh, she was not still and calm anymore, she was brewing stormclouds, lightning building in their centre.
But if she was a stormcloud, Melpomene was a volcano. “Shut your fucking mouth,” she snapped. “You don’t get to breeze in here and judge me. You don’t know what it’s like, you never will. Outsider. Get out of my house.”
“Is that why you’re having a baby?” Hecate stood, eyes on Melpomene’s middle, angry and cold. “’Building your own worship’? That’s a cruel weight to lay on a child.”
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” Melpomene screamed at her, screamed so loud, fists so tight, eyes so tight her vision burst in white and red. “GET OUT GET OUT!”
When she opened her eyes, seconds later, the room was empty. The sharp breath Melpomene took cut through her, and she bit her mouth closed and muffled another scream, storming toward her door to lock it, bolt it. “Fuck you,” she hissed at the door, and slapped it, soundly, with the palm of her hand.
Gods! Hecate thought, standing out on the street below Melpomene's window. Ugh!
Familia, Aitana agreed with her, sympathetically, matching her pace through the streets filled with New Years revellers. Yo prefiero mis gatos.
Hecate sighed raggedly. She was exhausted. She had nothing to offer Clio, nothing but an all-but-useless map to offer Artemis, nothing to offer Marian.
Despite frustrations, she showed her face for a short while at Peitho’s party, but the presence of these gathered younger gods was draining and she did not stay for long. Long enough to cup Luna’s beautiful face in her hands and kiss her forehead, wish her heart well for the coming year, for the growing cracks in that heart of hers were unmissable. She didn’t make the mistake of trying to find anything more than a kiss to offer the girl.
With her animals safely (and warmly) tucked up in Sleepy Hollow (Serene, short-memoried, was back by the fire, Gal, long-memoried, was not) she made her way across the river and out toward the freezing, wet streets where she and Hecuba had met the young boy. Not Ares’ boy, not Melpomene’s, but the youngest one.
Walking a street in life that she’d only walked in death gave her a strange feeling, like time was rippling round her ankles like the puddles on the road. She did not see the boy, and the house was empty, dark and cold, but as she turned to leave something across the street caught her attention. Woven into a chain link fence was a circle of willow branches, and beneath it was a plastic dog bowl that had obviously once contained something delicious that had already been snatched away. As an offering it wasn’t much compared to the things her worshipers put together for her, even now, but Hecate ran her fingers along the woven strands of the wood and thought it was the best little shrine she’d seen in months.
On New Years Day she returned to the place she’d been killed and found another. It was a wreath from the same willow tree, placed by the same hands with the same intention, and this one was hung from a branch of the tree she’d fallen under. Hecate stretched up on her toes to reach it, fingertips barely brushing the lowest of one of the hanging leaves.
It had been days since her last attempt at magic, but this made her want to try again. To be safe, though, she crossed the street toward her shop, because she was almost entirely out of myrtle ash.
Silas was there, all loose hair, dark eyes and warm smiles. He asked her what she’d done to her hair – she’d hacked off the burned bits into uneven choppy layers – and laughed at her when she told him the truth and said a spell had gone wrong and she’d burned it. His laughter settled something restless in her chest, and when he offered to do a reading for her she smiled and said, only if it’s a private reading, only if we have mulled cider first and candles after, to hold back the chill of winter.
She spent the first night of the new year in his bed, tracing the intricate lines of his tattoos with her fingertips, watching his lips press against the brand new, wine stained marks on her chest where the bullets had escaped her body. There’s more on your back he said, his voice soft with post-coital wonder.
Hecate closed her eyes and smiled as she decided to stay till morning.