Page 54 of The Ruin of Eros

“How could you keep this from me?” I whisper.This whole time.This whole time, I knew nothing.

“It was better that you did not know,” he says stiffly.

The audacity of his words!

“Better! According toyourjudgement? Better that I know nothing of the death—themurder—of my townspeople? That I know nothing of my family’s suffering?” My breath is shallow; my legs feel unsteady.

Father, Dimitra…did they flee with the survivors? Or are they in Hades’ realm now, after all? And what of the others? Too many faces flash through my mind. Neighbors, friends, merchants we’ve frequented for years. What about the Georgioues? What about Yiannis?

“What would it have achieved?” Something else has crept into his voice now, something that shores up any crack where guilt or remorse might have settled. And when I look up, everything about him is as blank as that stupid cloak, that faceless face.

“How many dead?” I whisper.

Silence answers me.

“How many?”

He lifts one shoulder, minutely.

“They are mortals,” he says then. “Their deaths would have come anyway, whether today or tomorrow.”

“I’ma mortal!” I slam a fist against the wall. “Death may mean nothing to you, but it is everything for us!” My head throbs. “You have no soul. You are a scourge, a disease. You may live forever, demon, but you will bring no goodness to this world.”

He says nothing. No angry retorts or shallow self-defense. He doesn’t even move. But I can’t look at him any longer. I turn on my heel and go back to my room, to stare through the night at the ruins of my home.

And then, by morning, I have a plan.

*

I wait for the first rays of light. I know the rhythms of this house by now. Soon Aletheia will come out of the kitchen with the key, and go down to let the horses out. But not this morning: this morning will be different.

I’ve been a fool, waiting here for the demon to return with news of my family. Thinking he would help me find them. Thinking he was my ally. All he offers me is lies.

I slink into the corridors and along to the door I know so well.

The birds chirrup and flutter—the smaller ones, at least, those clustered in the cage next to where I’m standing. They think I am here to feed them.

“Not food, little friends,” I say. “Something better than that.”

And I take the small, golden latch and slide it across. I pull back the panel and stand back, leaving the large square opening in the aviary wall, and I wait.

For the first few moments nothing changes, and my stomach rolls over. Don’t they understand? Have these creatures lostthemselves so far, that they cannot recognize freedom when they see it?

But then one little red bird twitters, and takes a curious hop toward the opening, and hops again, out of the cage. It flies dizzily for a moment, circling left, then right, disoriented. Finally it lands on the doorframe, perches there, and begins to sing.

As if drawn by the tune, a couple more birds fly out, and then a few more. And then more, faster now, and it seems to me the dam is breaking. Soon there is a steady stream of them, and the ones in the cage are growing agitated. They paid little attention to that first bird, or the first ten or twenty, but now that their brethren are freeing themselves by the dozen, the rest are clamoring and protesting. Everyone wants out.

The chaos intensifies, rising toward a fever pitch, and for a while I’m worried they’ll destroy each other. The birds still in the cage are in a frenzy now: the entrance is too small for many of them to escape at once. Some are pecking at each other in between trills and shrieks. One is bashing itself against the cage in its fever to be released.

“Hush,” I try to coax them. “You’ll all have your turn.” But soon I have to step back from the cage as the birds come racing out, filling the room, a jumble of feathers and color and sound, beating wings everywhere, squawks and deafening calls. They seem to take up more space outside the cage than in, and they just seem to keep coming.

But this is what I wanted.

I fight my way through the maelstrom of birds toward the door, and manage to fling it open. I stumble into the corridor and the birds burst out behind me, like some kind of stampede, cawing and shrieking. It occurs to me that perhaps the cage, too, was enchanted—that it contained more birds than even its tremendous size should have allowed, because there seems now to be no end of these birds, flooding out of the room in suchchaos.

But can I control the chaos?

Ducking, I run forward at a crouch, trying to avoid the swoosh of beaks and feathers and talons. I scurry toward the front of the cloud. Will they follow me? They only have two choices, backwards or forwards. I run as fast as I can. Some flap and swoop behind me, while others are already ahead of me, swarming the corridor to the limit of my sight. I worry for a moment I’ll lose my bearings and forget which turns are the ones to take, so camouflaged is everything by the frenzy of birds. But I race on. There are so many of them! If only a fraction took this path with me, it would still be enough.

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