Page 84 of The Ruin of Eros

“Our bargain is for the attempt, lady. We ask only that you carry the message.” There is something urgent about her voice,I think. She is trying to please me. I wonder why she should try so hard, when the bargain sounds like it’s more to my advantage than the dryads’.

I rub Ajax’s mane as he snorts and stamps. The sooner we move on from here, the better. The dryads are making him so agitated, I’m half-afraid he’ll bolt without me. But I must consider the offer I’ve been made. It is a good one, after all, since the trust is all on their side. For all they know, I won’t honor my bargain and Eros will never hear of their petition. But I would never cheat them like that.

I had always thought of immortality as an extraordinary gift, but only now does it strike me what a risk it can be, too—a curse is a curse forever, a miserable situation preserved for eternity.

“I thank you for your offer,” I say at last. “If I manage to rejoin Aphrodite’s son, I will offer your petition in good faith.”

She accepts!faint voices chatter.

A rain droplet falls from my wet hair onto my neck, and trickles slowly down my spine. I push down the queasy feeling in my stomach.

“Then come into the heart of the glade,” the voice says. “We will show you with our branches; we will point your way.”

I tug on Ajax’s reins and lead him, reluctant, to the circle’s heart, where the biggest tree stands. This one, then, must be the leader, the mother tree.

“A few paces more, lady,” it says.

I don’t know what it is, but something about the voice…there is a sweetness there, something artificial, that disquiets me. Iwantto secure the bargain, but the hairs are standing up on my neck, my breathing has quickened. I don’t move forward. A few paces in front of me is the trunk of the great mother-tree, its bark thickly ridged, with a great whorl that makes me think of a tremendous cyclops-eye.

I stand my ground, and open my mouth to say something—what, I don’t know.

But then Ajax tosses his neck, gives a last whinny, and bolts—with my arm still caught in the reins. I stumble forward, crying out as my shoulder jolts with pain. In the second it takes to loose myself from the tangle of reins I topple to the ground, my shoulder protesting, my lungs heaving. The reins whip through the grass in Ajax’s wake as he hurtles out of view, and my eyes prick with furious tears.

No food or water. No cloak. And now no horse.

How long will this cursed journey take on foot? How am I to survive it?

Then I feel a cool, rough grip across my legs. It tightens, and there’s a rustling sound; another rough touch snakes across my back, drawing me in, binding me tighter. I gasp through the tangle of my disheveled hair.

The mother-tree, the leader of the dryads: she has roped me in against her trunk, bound me tight with her great tree-limbs. One heavy branch imprisons my shoulders, another my waist. Smaller ones shackle my ankles.

Ours now,the voices say.She is ours.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I can’t move. I’m immobilized, arms at my sides, feet locked.

“Why do you do this?” I force my heart to beat steadily, and my voice to stay calm. “I undertook to do you a favor, a fair exchange. Who will plead your case if you do not let me go?”

“You are more useful to us like this,” the voice answers. Her tone has changed. It is not so plaintive or so cloying now.

“You are the one Aphrodite seeks. The troublemaker. If we are the ones to catch you, she will thank us.”

Thank us! Free us!

My heart thunders in my chest.

“So I am to be your bounty?”

“You are to be our tribute,” the voice answers.

My throat is dry; my mind races. There is one thing, only one, I can think of. My quiver of arrows is pinned against my back, and the great branch holding my shoulders keeps me from raising my arm. But my mother’s knife is still strapped to my waist, and I think I have just enough movement to reach it.

Perhaps it’s just fancy to think that a knife will do any harm to a dryad, but it’s all I have. Even a small wound may cause a shock, enough to loosen her grip for just an instant, and an instant will be enough.

I don’t have time to doubt myself.

“Do not kill me.” I play for time. “You will arouse the wrath of my husband. You would not wish to be cursed by the gods a second time?”

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