Page 9 of Aïdes the Unseen
Still as the humans continued to come, I weaved the wheat stalks absently. At first, I thought I was making a wreath, but itwas too small. Eventually, my mother looked at the creation in my hands with pure delight.
“For me?” The question held the shimmer of love and surprise.
“Of course,” I answered her, because they were the only words that would satisfy. She dipped her head so I could place the crown woven from golden wheat upon her head. She positively glowed, the warmth radiated from her and spilled over onto the celebrants.
It was a good sign that the first harvest was so plentiful.
A very good sign.
As the sun dipped low, the fields did not quiet. They pulsed.
The golden hour spilled out into something looser, warmer. Children fell asleep curled beneath fig trees, their mothers swaying in time to reed pipes and hand drums. Men passed amphorae between them, laughing with wet eyes. A group had gathered to dance—barefoot, flushed, pulling each other into spirals until the dust rose in clouds and clung to their skin like pollen.
I stayed at the edge, half in the shadows of the olive grove. My hands were sticky with crushed apricot. My mouth tasted of honeyed wine. The warmth didn’t bother me, not even as the air thickened with sweat and sweetness.
Then Hermes appeared beside me, as he so often did, not arriving so much as just simply beingthere.
“Missed you earlier,” he said, biting into a pear he hadn’t held a moment ago. “Did you come with the season or just behind it?”
“With it,” I said. “More or less.”
“Time’s slippery like that.” He chewed thoughtfully. “Everything’s late and early, depending who’s watching.”
He said it casually, but his eyes flicked toward mine. I didn’t answer the unspoken question hanging in the air. I just looked out at the dancers.
A new rhythm had taken hold of the music. Lower, dirtier. Feet stomped harder. Someone laughed too loud and stumbled into the firelight. Lovers pulled each other into the long grass with little ceremony, no pretense. The sounds of coupling joined the beat, moaning, panting, the rustle of limbs and breath tangled together.
“Ah,” Hermes said, licking juice from his fingers. “There it is.”
“What?”
“Fertility,” he said. “In all its forms.”
Then came Dionysus.
You always knew when he was close. The air ripened, wine-heavy, soft-edged. He walked in crowned with ivy, his eyes alight, his skin glowing like he’d never been anything but full of joy. The mortals rushed to greet him, no fear in their bodies, only delight and fever.
They poured wine over into their goblets, onto the ground, and into each other’s mouths. Someone brought out a tambourine. Another woman stripped naked, wreathed herself in poppies, and began to chant.
“He’s been invited,” Hermes said, nodding toward the makeshift stage they’d built from crates and woven rugs. “There’s a play.”
The actors stumbled into place as the sun gave up its last breath and slid behind the hills. Torches flared. The people cheered. This was no tragedy, not tonight. It was bawdy, vulgar, ecstatic. A tale of drunken gods and seduced mortals, of mistaken identities and divine mischief. Dionysus laughed the loudest, throwing a handful of figs at one of the actors mid-line.
Hermes leaned toward me, his breath cool despite the heat all around. “You should try laughing more.”
“I do,” I said. “When no one’s watching.”
“Ah,” he mused. “One of those laughs.”
I looked at the stage again. Dionysus had taken a seat on a wine barrel, surrounded by girls who didn’t care whose god he was, only that he was beautiful and alive. He let them touch him. He kissed one on the mouth and pulled her into his lap without missing a beat of the clapping.
My mother was gone by then. Back among the wheat, maybe. She might have already returned to her temple where the offerings waited in neat rows—loaves and fruit and tokens carved from wood. She had accepted the mortals’ reverence. She had blessed them. She would rest well without pulling me with her, a true sign of her contentment with the day’s harvest.
But I remained in the dark, beside Hermes, watching the mortals dance themselves raw.
“They think it’s all for her,” I murmured.
“Isn’t it?” he asked.
