WHO: Hecate, Melpomene WHEN: Friday, around midday WHERE: Urania's, Melpomene's WHAT: Gathering a few more ingredients WARNINGS: None
Hecate hadn’t seen Melpomene since the Muse had screamed at her to get out of her house, fiery, furious and defensive. The woman who sat before her now seemed like a different woman entirely. Melpomene was in one of Urania’s armchairs, looking through the rain that was pouring down the long windows, eyes toward her own apartment. She didn’t look up when Hecate stepped into the room, even when Urania announced her, so Hecate stepped closer.
Melpomene’s eyes were flat, and still, and dark, her thoughts elsewhere, yet as she caught sight of Hecate in her peripheral, her eyes changed. If they were still, it was only on the surface. Melpomene saw Hecate and something big shifted; a dark shape moving under the ice.
Hecate reminded herself to be cautious, though she did not think she had the patience to stretch to being kind. “I need some of your heart's blood,” she said, cutting straight to the point. “I’m going to find your son.”
“I didn’t think you wanted me to have a son,” Melpomene’s voice was low, and very, very worn. “I thought you said I was cruel.”
Hecate had said that, yes, and she knew that recent events could arm a very strong argument in favour of the label, but she was not here for arguments, only blood. She knelt at Melpomene’s feet and reached for her arm, pushing back the sleeve, and Melpomene did not fight her.
Far from fighting her, instead a flicker crossed Melpomene’s face, a pained spark that broke through the hopeless bitterness and made her look like so many of the young women who turned to Hecate when they were lost. She wanted to hope that a spell would bring her child back to her arms, just as she hoped a war god would, a sun god would, but she knew that such a hope, if it failed, would destroy her. It was a look that was followed by tears, silent ones, and Melpomene closed her eyes as they fell and held out her arm in silence and let Hecate take what she needed from her.
Hecate spiked Melpomene's arm with the point of a clean knife, and pressed a circle of clean white linen against the puncture, till the bleeding slowed on its own; it wasn’t a deep hole. Hecate made the fabric disappear into a pocket, and pressed a purple bandaid against Melpomene’s arm. “I must focus my magic on finding the boys,” she explained, as she did. “Not on healing you.”
Melpomene didn’t look at her – her eyes had opened again, gazing toward her apartment. “Good,” she said, and the bitterness, Hecate thought, was no longer directed at her. “Glad someone understands.”
There was none of Tragos’ blood left in Melpomene’s apartment, Hecate found, when she broke in across the road to check. The living room furniture had been pushed into the kitchen and bedroom, the carpet ripped up and gone. Hecate could still tell exactly where he’d died, though.
For a moment, she sank down to the bare floor, her hands pressed against it. His death was so close she could feel the fear beating through her, the regret, the desperation.
She called out for his ghost, using both of his names, but she was answered only by silence, and a deep, lingering feeling of remorse.
She had forgotten, for a time, what her final tarot reading before her death had warned her. Look beyond the obvious it had said. The truth is obscured. Look closer. But she hadn’t looked closely at all at Tragos before cursing him. She’d seen the obvious (he had killed her, after all) and had barely investigate any deeper before casting her punishment.
“I know my curse was not the only thing that led you here, child,” she said aloud. “But for my part in it, for removing a path you may otherwise have taken, I am sorry.”
Another thing she knew: these were words spoken too late. Wherever Tragos’ was – if he was anywhere – he was beyond both aid and apologies.
Hecate stood. She would ask Marcie for some of his ashes, and hope they’d be light enough and swift enough to lead her toward his brother.
Out of the three lost boys, she had to hope Tragos was the only one past help.