Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

“Rise,” he said, “and sit with me. Does the daughter of the House of Cadmus wish to become a prophet? Or blind, or old? Those last two may be easily achieved, given enough years and patience.”

“I don’t have years!”

“Nor patience, either, it would seem.”

I picked up my spindle and put it down. But then I placed it in his hands. “Remember this?” I said. “Remember when you wore a woman’s body as your own?”

I had always doubted the tale. Tiresias is so dry, so unlovely, so gnarled and hairy and male . But when he took the spindle from me, he naturally maintained the tension and the twist with a sureness no man’s hands could ever know.

“It’s true,” I marveled. “You were a woman seven years, before you came again to your manhood.”

“But it is not my manhood you seek, little princess.”

“Yes, it is!” The prophet eased away from me in his seat uncomfortably, and I laughed. “Not that. Never that.”

Tiresias shrugged, and laughed himself. “What, then?”

“I wish to leave my father’s house.”

“And so you shall, when you are wed.”

“I do not wish to marry. I wish to follow the goddess.”

“Have you asked your family’s permission?”

“They only laugh at me. They say a girl never knows her own mind.” The old man nodded. “But when I say I do know, they tell me a princess must wed, to carry on her noble line.”

“You think they are wrong?”

I hung my head, ashamed of what I must ask. “Is it possible, Seer, for someone to be born into the wrong body?” I waited, tense, to see if he would pull away. But he turned the spindle in his hands. He did not spin.

“Go on.”

I leaned closer, whispered in the grizzled hair that fell over his ears. “I don’t want what women want. I don’t want a husband, or children, or a house. I want — what I want is what men want!” There. I had said it. My heart hammered, and my cheeks were hot. But I felt strangely glad, and lighter, now. The words came tumbling out of me: “I want to run free, to hunt, to kill, to glory in my fleetness and my strength! If I can’t have them as a woman, then let me have them as a man!” Hardly knowing what I was doing, I grasped his old shoulders between my hands. “Tell me your secret! Tell me what you did, how you changed your shape, and how I may do it, too!”

Tiresias did not move. But his blind eyes turned up to mine. “And if I do? What is it you hunt, Child of Cadmus? What is your true desire?”

“Artemis,” I whispered, her very name a prayer I breathed into his face. “I would seek Artemis of the Hunt.”

I don’t know where he found the strength to push me away. It was as if another touched me, threw me backward to the ground. Tiresias towered above me, his staff raised, a howl like an animal’s coming from his throat: “ Woe! Woe to the House of Cadmus! Blood and terror, terror and blood and the great deer running!”

“Stop!” I crawled to the edge of his robe, pulling on it to draw his attention, but it was as if I were not even there.

“O terrible transformation!” He flung up his arm again, as though to hide the vision from his sightless eyes. “The hunter hunted and the terror loosed! Alas for a house made barren! Alas for a seed made cold!”

The prophecy was terrible enough. But what if people heard the shouting, and came running to listen?

“I didn’t mean it,” I babbled. “I beg you, stop, I didn’t mean it—”

Slowly, the prophet lowered his staff until he was leaning his full weight on it. His knees were shaking. “Oh, little princess, what I saw!” Slowly, he lowered himself to his knees before me. “I beg you, for your grandfather’s sake and mine, do not pursue the goddess. Such a terrible transformation. Death and madness. Terrible, terrible. ”

The old man was weeping at my feet. I had to kneel before him myself, and clasp his ankles and promise I would never seek to become other than that I am.

But what is that?

My sister rose in the middle of the night to tell me of the bloody prophecy. She found me up on the roof, where I’d gone to watch the progress of Saturn as it met for the first time in my life with Alpha Serpentis.

Her face was the color of the moon, silver, all the blood washed away by starlight. She did not weep, but I held her by her stiff shoulders to comfort her anyway, in the cold night air.

“I dare not go,” she said. “I dare not run.” She looked out over the sleeping fields to the woods beyond. “And yet, I almost wish I could. To seek the goddess, to look on her once before I die…”

“Creusa!”

“It’s the way I feel. I can’t explain.”

“No need,” I said. “I just don’t want you to die, that’s all.”

She smiled, and touched my cheek. “You big star-gazing ox.”

That’s when I realized how I could help her. I was a fool not to have thought of it before. Chiron was right: the gods decide our fate, but it is ours to look squarely on it, to take up what we have been given, and to use it the best way that we can.

If fate decreed me for a hunter, why then, I would hunt. But my quarry would be for my sister’s sake. The goddess loves one who hunts with spirit and true purpose.

Creusa yawned. She really isn’t much good at night. “I’d better get to bed,” she said sadly. “The suitors are coming, and I have household matters to attend to.”

“I’d better get to bed, myself.” I forced a yawn, too. “The hunt starts bright and early, and I’ve got a lot of meat to catch for all your suitors.”

She said, “I hope they like rabbit; it’s all you’re likely to get this time of year.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll dedicate my catch to you, and to your future happiness.”

That’s what I told her. But my true quarry, that I’ll keep a secret, until I can return to my sad sister with news to turn her pale cheeks bright with joy.

Actaeon is gone. He’s been gone for five days and four nights. The skies have been clear. Maybe he has finally wandered off, star-struck, star-gazing, at last.

His companions say they lost him on the second day of the hunt. They’d been running hard, and their nets and spears were full of the blood of the wild animals they’d caught. It was midday, sunny and hot, and even in the tangle of bushes and scrub, the shadows were short. Hunting was over for the day. They cast themselves down in whatever shade they could find, and drank from streams and cleaned their nets. They’d begin again early the next morning.

They say my brother wandered away, following the music of a rocky stream that led deep into the shady wood. They saw him disappear into a grove of pines and cypress, and that was all.

Hours passed, and he did not return. They thought he’d fallen asleep in the shade somewhere, and let him be. Then a wonderful thing happened so late in the day: a huge stag came running out of the pines, scattering bright drops of water from its brows. The dogs were excited; it was as if they’d been waiting all day for this particular stag, as if they’d already had its scent. Weariness forgotten, all gave it chase.

The stag ran blindly, crashing through the brush in terror. But the fierce dogs were always on its trail, never resting or letting go. When the great stag finally turned to face the dogs, instead of attacking them with its horns, it stretched out its neck and bellowed, as if its voice were calling them to stop! The dogs fell back, confused, but the men surrounded it, urging them on.

“Where’s Actaeon?” they cried. “He really should see this. Actaeon! Actaeon!” The forest rang with my brother’s name.