Page 113 of Aïdes the Unseen
The force of the wind left her naked from the waist down, and as much as I enjoyed the sight, I kept my senses attuned to this space around us. This memory. My task was one I would not fail at.
I would protect and preserve her at all costs.
The air grew heavier with something I hadn't expected. It was a sweetness not marred by decay or divinity. Something older? Though it was hard to imagine anything that was older than us. Even though the Titans came before us and before them had been Gaia and Uranus—and before that?
I had no answer.
The dog rose as we neared the olive tree, giving off one low and soft bark to announce our arrival.
Irina paused at the edge of the spiral. The stones were worn, chipped and pitted by time. The pattern had been set deliberately. There was no mistaking that. It wasn’t just a symbol, but some kind of memory encoded geometry.
It reminded me of…
She stepped into the spiral and the moment her foot crossed into the path, the wind shifted. Only slightly, but I definitely felt it and so did she.
Her head snapped up and her tumble of hair blew back from her face. “It’s humming.”
It was. Not an exact sound, but definitely a vibration. A harp string plucked deep underground. She walked slowly, spiraling inward, and I followed just behind her, my steps shadowing hers.
She passed the same stone three times before she paused, crouched, then brushed her hand over it, revealing a mark. It was nearly faded with age, yet still discernible beneath the dust.It was a sigil. Not Greek. Not any symbol of the divine languages I knew. Not any modern glyph.
Older. Crude. Yet something about it struck me low in the spine. Two crescents, back-to-back, joined by a vertical line. Beneath it, three points etched in a downward arc. A moon. A gate. And?—
“She buried her name here,” Irina whispered.
I went still.
No fear marked her tone, only awe. She glanced back at me. Her eyes gleamed, not gold or shimmering with the aches of the past, but wet with something half-formed.
“I mean—Idid,” she clarified. “Or, maybe I helped. It wasn’t a grave. It was a choice. We buried my name. Myfirstname. Before Kore. Before Persephone.”
What she didn’t add was before the long list of names she’d worn since then.
Turning back to the stone, she traced the sigil again. Her fingers trembled.
“I was someone else here. Before myths. Before Olympus decided who I was allowed to be.” She cast me a quick apology with her eyes. An apology I never needed from her. Her indictment of Olympus was a judgment on them. I’d long avoided aligning myself with them.
She stood then walked the final turns of the spiral. At the center, the earth was darker, richer, like it had been turned in the last season. Above it, nestled into a fold of bark, the olive tree had grown something half-hidden.
A strip of faded cloth, wound around a bone-colored shard, porous, maybe wood, maybe ivory. A keepsake. A token. She closed her fingers around it, removing it, and the tree didn’t resist.
“I loved someone here,” she said in a soft voice. “But I don’t think it was romantic. I think it was deeper. Soul-bound.Someone who taught me how to return. Someone who reminded me that I could be bound to the world and not just fate.”
I wanted to speak, but the reverence in her voice kept me silent.
Turning toward me again, she held the token like it might disappear were she to release it. “I think this is the name I gave to myself. Not one someone else placed on me.”
Her voice caught and she swallowed hard.
“I don’t remember what it was yet. But I remember the feeling of it. The breath held at the top of the hill. A laugh before it breaks.Home.”
At her feet, the sigils in the stones began to pulse.
One by one, faint blue light flaring like heat lightning beneath the surface, they blazed in recognition.
The dog whined low in his throat and took two steps forward, tail still and ears flat. He looked at the spiral’s center and then delicately lay down just beside it. Guarding. Witnessing
The sigil nearest me lit up.
