Furies (59 page)
Aculeo and Sekhet watched the children charge up from the canal, dripping wet and laughing, running through the back gate into the courtyard, Gellius and Xanthias well behind them. Pesach awoke from his nap as the children thundered past his bench. He grumbled and grouched at the sudden intrusion, but gave a rueful smile. The three men had finally turned up several days after the murders, a little worse for wear from living on the streets but alive at least. The girls sat on the ground near Pesach’s bench and started up a game of Mehen.
“I’m grateful you took the girls in,” Aculeo told Sekhet.
“They deserve to finally have a normal life.”
“Do they ever talk about what happened?”
“Not a word since that night. Idaia still refuses to sleep alone. Tyche often awakes with bad dreams. It will take more time for them to heal. What about you?” she asked, listening to the rattle of plates and cups being set at the table.
He shrugged. “I’m alive, the murders have ended. I’ll move on.”
“And what of Corvinus?” Pesach asked, eavesdropping from his place on the bench. “Do you move on from his betrayal too?”
“Pesach, let the dead be,” Aculeo said wearily. “I just want to live my life for a change.”
“As does Flavianus and all his ilk,” Pesach snorted. “Back in Neapolis or Capria or Pompeii, no doubt, living quite comfortably off the gold they stole from us and countless other fools.”
“Perhaps you could let the poor man recover before you hound him for vengeance,” the healer snapped.
Pesach muttered something under his breath but had learned from experience there was much to be lost and little to be gained by arguing with Sekhet.
Aculeo looked out at the sunset, the breadth and depth of the coloured sky, the seagulls catching their wingtips on invisible currents of wind to sail towards the light of Pharos glowing in the distance. “I still have trouble wrapping my head around how Calisto stayed with Zeanthes, helping him. Like Dionysos and Ariadne, Zeanthes claimed.”
Sekhet smiled. “Yes, well, those two didn’t have such a nice ending either.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember your own mythology?” she asked in surprise. “Mad Dionysos, the god who was murdered, the god who murders. He travelled from one land to the next, killing as he went. Yet Ariadne loved him anyway, worshipped him.
You know how Dionysos finally rewarded Ariadne for her loyalty? By ordering her to hang herself. He could have used his power to help his lover, yet he chose instead to use it to destroy her a
nd all those who’d loved her as well.”
“But Zeanthes didn’t try to actually hang her. Her life was never truly in danger.”
“Only symbolically. They used others in her stead for that role as they tried to do with Tyche. But Calisto was Phrygian. The Phrygians worship Cybele, the Mother-Goddess, who rules over all the other gods. Dionysos included. Her devoted male worshippers castrate themselves, then hang themselves in her honour. Like Iovinus and Gurculio. Her sacrifices – her osti. Be grateful you escaped with both your life and your manhood intact. You really should be more careful with the friends you choose.”
They watched Idaia and Tyche, quiet now, hunched over their board game. “What shall we do with Idaia?” Aculeo asked quietly. “She helped Calisto lead countless women to their deaths.”
Sekhet sighed. “That poor child lived through a great deal of evil not of her making. She comes from a place where human sacrifice is normal practice. She was torn away from her family, forced into slavery, then raised by that evil pair. Can she truly be at fault for the role that was forced upon her?”
“I don’t fault her, only fear for her. For both of them,” Aculeo said as he watched Idaia move her ivory game piece around the little maze, until at last it entered the snake’s mouth. The end of the game – the afterlife. The children laughed in delight and clapped their hands. “What will become of them?”
“That’s for the Gods to decide, as for us all.”
Enjoy an Excerpt
from
by
D.L. JOHNSTONE
© D.L.Johnstone 2012, All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1
Chalk Valley
, British Columbia
– 19:00h
Phil Lindsay sat back in his seat, eyes half closed, trying to calm down. He took another hit, held it, then slowly exhaled, watching the smoke slip away. He gazed into Chalk Valley, its cracked white walls like broken shoulders sloping unevenly into the dense pine forest below. The sun was dipping below the horizon, bleeding away the day’s warmth and colour, leaving behind a lifeless grey sky. The keening of cicadas echoed through the valley, a lonely, wordless song against the coming darkness. Then, like an eye winking shut, the sun was gone and all that remained was its scarlet stain like an angry welt across the end of the day. The toke had burned down so close to the tip that Lindsay could feel the heat singeing his fingers. He took a final hit before tossing it out the window.
He shook himself from his daydream and checked the glowing green numbers of the dashboard clock. Shit. Where’d the day go? He felt spent, tired and hungry. He ate a half-melted candy bar he’d found stashed in the glove compartment, washing it down with a few mouthfuls of warm beer. Now what? Go home?
Fuck that. Just fuck it.
He started up the car, threw it into gear and gunned it up the dirt road, brown dust clouds boiling up from the wheel wells as he made a sharp turn onto the main road, the tires squealing. The road ran downhill fast and dark and empty, the early evening air rushing through the open windows of the car, smelling of damp, rotted cedar and faded summer. He followed West Gimly back to Highway 1 and headed back to Vancouver, an hour and a half away.
Time enough to think …
Sundale Mall, East Vancouver - 20:25h
Lindsay stared at his reflection in the chipped metal mirror that hung over the bathroom sink. He hadn’t bothered to shave that morning, his dark hair was stuck up at the sides and his face and hands were caked with mud from the valley. He washed up with pink liquid soap from the dispenser, the filthy black water swirling around the bowl of the sink, then wet his hair with his hands and combed it carefully back off of his forehead. He splashed some water on his face and shaved as best he could with a plastic razor. Only a few nicks.
He took a couple of red and black capsules from a ziplock bag in his pocket and washed them down his throat with a cupped handful of tapwater. He checked himself out in the mirror one last time, pointed at his reflection, cocked his finger and fired.
A girl in a denim jacket was just coming out of the women’s bathroom. Her hair was short, dirty blonde. Her head was down, oblivious. Lindsay looked around. All alone. Two bathrooms, utility room off to the side, emergency exit down the hall. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. Total rush. He moved quickly towards the glass door that led back into the main mall and stepped in front of the doorway, blocking the girl’s way. She looked up at him, confused. Lindsay smiled and stared down at her breasts pushing against her tight black T-shirt, bare at the midriff, too perfectly tanned and the gold belly button ring that glinted above her low slung jeans.
“Hey, Tricia,” he said. Too fast, too anxious, he thought, take a deep breath, relax. The girl moved away, wary. Nobody to hear you, all alone, bitch. Lindsay smiled, reaching out a hand to grab her wrist.
A teenage boy came up from behind him, shoving the door open into his back. Lindsay turned around, startled. “What the hell’s going on,” the boy asked, scowling at Lindsay.
“Just some freak,” the girl said, taking the boy’s arm. “C’mon.”
He watched them leave, then walked past the store fronts to the food court, ordered a cheeseburger, onion rings and a coke and glanced around for a place to sit. Most of the tables were occupied by low-lifes, old people, losers. A handful of teenage girls sat at a table in the corner, chattering with one another, their haunted eyes like bruises in the pale shadows of their faces. Lindsay felt deeply depressed all of a sudden. Look at them for God’s sake, they’re like empty shells, there’s no feeling there. What’s this world coming to anyway? Why did I even come—
Oh.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw the girl. Her face was delicate, pale as bone china, her eyes, pale green like spring leaves unfolding beneath the pink rose petal eye shadow and too-thick mascara. Her long, strawberry-blonde hair was parted straight down the middle, held out of her face by two plastic barrettes pinned just above her ears. Lindsay sat on one of the orange plastic mushroom-shaped seats just three tables away from her and watched her out of the corner of his eye. She wore silver rings on several fingers and half a dozen earrings in her ears. Her sneakers were a little tattered, her blue jeans frayed at the pant cuffs – nothing lasts these days. It’s a disposable society.
The thing that impressed him most wasn’t so much that she sat by herself, but the way she sat by herself. She doesn’t check her watch, no half-expectant glances around the food court. No friends are coming to join her. Look at the way she’s dressed, she’s not on a break from her job at one of the stores. Sitting there all alone and lonely at that sad little plastic table, eating french fries and drinking a pop. Virtually invisible to everyone else in the food court, a vaguely pretty, forgettable face in a sea of forgettable faces.
She glanced up at him. He gave her a friendly nod, pulled out his cellphone and pretended to talk into it. She looked away again. He began to daydream about Chalk Valley, only an hour and a half away, a hundred and fifty klicks, with its dense scrub forest, secret paths and deep rushing river, washing over the round grey stones … In his mind, the thing was already done, played out in countless permutations.